


Innocent Abroad

by ScrimshawPen (orphan_account)



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Manipulative Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2020-07-31 14:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20116606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ScrimshawPen
Summary: Like most stories, this one is about a mostly-sane person who doesn't get shot in the head. AU to The Courier and Her Conscience. Rated T for canon-typical reasons. Major character deaths ahead.





	1. Rigged from the Start

"_People forget couriers can keep communities alive... until the day they're gone, and their breath catches in their throat." - Ulysses_

o - o - o - o - o

For weeks, the fugitive had worked on convincing herself that she'd imagined the magnitude of what she'd done. The destruction she'd left in her wake. She certainly hadn't hung around long enough to burn the images into her brain. No. She had run, dropping the device into the dust, where it could lie until the end of time as far as she was concerned.

"It was just a little earthquake," she told a fence post in passing near the California border. "A few pyrotechnic effects over a sparsely-populated strip of dirt. It's not like I did anything wrong."

"I was just following orders," she growled at the firewood she was splitting in exchange for a night's bed and board outside of Goodsprings. "It wasn't my plan. Not my fault. It was Eden. It was Crenshaw. It was the stupid NCR for not knowing what they had. Those people were asking for it, building in a place like that."

It wasn't until she was cooling her heels in Primm, waiting for a new job to come in, that she decided on her truth. The solution to her problem.

"It never happened."

o - o - o - o - o

What's one courier, more or less?

The seven _should_ have been untouchable to begin with. Even the lowest of the low in the lawless wastes knew the rule: _thou shalt not harm the message-bearers_. It didn't matter who they were or what they had done. Even if they were criminals - and they often were - one waited until they'd fulfilled their duty before seeing justice done.

When the six died, their last deliveries scattered like the trash they were, a groan of protest rose up. Postmasters wrote angry letters to the secretaries of faraway senators. Soldiers thought twice about trusting letters and pay bound homeward to their wives and mothers. Survivors clutched their packages and their weapons tighter and avoided major roads.

The seventh disappeared, assumed to be just another shallow grave on the road. At any rate, she accepted no more jobs. She'd been new and almost no one had seen her face. No one missed her. No one mourned.

After all, what's one courier, more or less?

o - o - o - o - o

She could see it from the overpass outside of Primm, the great tower brilliant against the evening sky. Vegas. Sin City. City of Lights. So close, and yet so far. The impatient part of her wanted to decline both jobs and march upon the city today, launching straight into a one-woman mission to seek her fortune, but her plan required caps. Those lights had been waiting for her a long time, she decided. Twenty years, in fact. Another few days would make no difference.

It bothered her a little, going in blind. All of her intelligence came secondhand, a rough catechism handed down by those who had never set foot there, their facts and figures less than helpful. _Pre-war population: just over one million. Current: considerably less. Principle products: electricity and entertainment. Government: a local autocrat, with the NCR as an occupying force. _Of the people themselves she knew almost nothing and that could be a problem.

She laughed, dismissing these concerns. Didn't she have an appointment with Mr. House already? That was her foot in the door and the _real_ reason she needed to complete the big job at least. _I'll be someone here before the year's out_, she promised the stars above and the tower ahead. _Not a courier. Couriers are invisible. _I _won't be._

Without a backwards glance, Courier 6 set her face toward the Dam, where two packages waited for her signature, one large and one small. She'd collect them both, but only one of them mattered. _This_ time, she'd see the delivery through.

o - o - o - o - o

Ten pounds. That's how much weight the damned machine part added to her pack, and it was enough to set her off-balance when the thin scree of rocks gave way on the bighorner trail. Her feet went out from under her, and she slid and bumped the remaining distance to the bottom of the slope. Even before the pea gravel had stopped moving and the dust had settled, she was up again and running.

Blood dotted the legs of her jeans, torn from the fall, but she couldn't stop. They had _shot_ at her, almost within hearing distance of the Dam and its vigilant guard. People who would risk that kind of attention would do almost anything, and she had no idea _why_.

Was it the part? Surely not. It was invaluable to the miners of Sloan, but useless to everybody else. She didn't understand why anybody would kill for it, though it might well slow her down enough to get her killed. The only reason she hadn't dropped it yet was because she couldn't stop to drag it out of her pack.

That left Mr. House's poker chip. On the surface, it was a coin-sized token made of some lustrous metal. Perhaps platinum. What it _actually_ was, she had no idea. Though new to the job, she had adopted the lack of curiosity appropriate to a courier. The past had taught her that it didn't pay to think too deeply about what she carried. Mr. House wanted a shiny chip and a shiny chip he would have. _If_ she survived to give it to him.

The moon set and she began to stumble, tired and disoriented in the dark. Clouds covered the stars, and she could no longer be sure of her direction, only the pain in her legs and the need to get away from those who pursued her. Once, years ago, she'd had a Pip-Boy, whose maps and built-in light would have guided her safely to sanctuary, but that was long gone, sold for food and medicine. Just as she herself had been, in another lifetime.

When the dim lights of a settlement finally shone over the highway, she didn't have the breathing space to be cautious. Caught between the promise of a bullet in the back and the possibility of shelter, she'd gamble on the latter.

o - o - o - o - o

While his job was to watch the road for _all_ possible threats to Novac, Boone was on the alert for men, primarily. Men wearing red. Men _not_ wearing red. Anybody who might have anything at all to do with the Legion, particularly those coming from the south.

He almost overlooked the girl slipping into town in the dead of night. She didn't fit the profile. She was coming from the wrong direction. She noticed him, though - gave him a jaunty little salute from the ground far below before she walked out of his line of sight. He didn't know where she thought she was going. She'd find no one in the hotel office, not for hours yet. The doors to the courtyard would remain locked until Andy opened them at first light. Sure enough, ten minutes later, and she was back, grinning up at him, stamping and rubbing her arms to stay warm.

"Can I come in? There's some guys after me, and I'd as soon _not_ be out in the open when they come to call."

"Town's closed."

"I can pay."

"Doesn't matter. Town's closed." He didn't like it, but he had his orders. He'd always been one to follow them. Slowly, as an afterthought, he asked, "What sort of guys?"

"Some lousy slimeball in a suit and his hired thugs. Must be trackers - they've followed me tight all the way from the Mojave Express in Primm, no matter what I did. I'm supposed to deliver a package to Vegas, but I ended up running south instead after they almost caught me by the Dam. I've been moving all night. Been on my feet for days, it feels like. I can't find a safe place to rest."

He heard the hint, but didn't say anything. Life was hard for everybody.

"Can you at least warn me if you see them? Maybe shoot a couple? Just so's I have a chance. My name's Martus, if you need something to put on my grave marker. That's M-A-R-T-U-S."

Boone sighed. "Follow the fence around to the northeastern corner. There's a loose panel there that no one's got around to fixing yet. You're small enough you should be able to squeeze through. Then come up here. I can't let you wander around the compound."

A perfect set of white teeth flashed up at him. "Thanks!" She disappeared, but a few minutes later, he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs behind him.

"Don't bother me," he told her without turning around. "I have to focus on the road."

"Sure. I'm just happy to be sitting down. My feet are fucking killing me."

Boone glanced at her, noticing that she'd pulled her boots off - they at least were quality goods, even if the rest of her garb was almost rags - and was peeling bloody socks off of a nasty set of blisters. Up close, even by moonlight, she looked exhausted, dirty, and very, very young. Twenty, he guessed, but with the kind of hardness in her eyes that he expected from a woman on her own in the wasteland. He cleared his throat.

"There's a blanket back there. You can sleep if you want."

She gave him a thin, mocking smile. "No thanks. Not until I have a locked door between me 'n everybody else. No offense meant. I'm sure you're a real nice guy. World's full of them, I've found."

Boone nodded. He understood. In her place, he'd think the same.

"If you're staying on a day or two, I got a job just right for a stranger..."

o - o - o - o - o

If there was a time for second-guessing, it was in the moments before Jeannie May looked up to meet his gaze. Boone watched the younger woman stalk across the road, as lithe and self-possessed as a cat. Behind her, the hotel manager shuffled along, the house slippers and ratty bathrobe a poor choice for the occasion. A different man might have felt sorry for the old spinster; a different man might have stopped to ask questions. When he looked into her eyes, however, he _knew_ \- or, at least, he knew enough to act.

"Close enough for government work," as Gorobets would have said.

He couldn't have missed if he tried. Not at that range. It was clean and quick, which was more than the likes of that deserved. Boone didn't like shooting women, never had and never would. It didn't matter that some of them were demons. He hated the way they looked… after. He made himself look all the same. For a nightmarish instant, the bony old corpse rippled and changed - he saw curves and curls and shocked blue eyes, clearer and closer than they had been at the end of Boone's hope. He blinked and the apparition was gone. Only Jeannie May remained, her and the courier both.

Unfazed by the blood spray that dotted her skin, the only living woman in Boone's world smiled triumphantly, face tilted toward the sky, his beret perched crookedly on her head. She wore a knowing look, an expression at once confident and cruel. _You owe me now_, he heard her say in his head, though they had made no such bargain at all. _I own you_.

For an instant, Boone hated her - and himself - enough to end it all. He had started the night with a full clip and he needed only two more bullets. One for the little witch below and one for himself. Let the good people of Novac make what they would of the bloody triangle they left. The world would be better without two such as them.

He didn't, of course. Before he could act, the time for second thoughts had passed.

o - o - o - o - o

Boone was never sure how many caps Tony got out of him by the end of the day, but the bottle ended up with them and they ended up in her room - or, rather, the room whose key she had lifted from the late Jeannie May's wall. He didn't want to see her in his bed, and didn't want her to see the wreck he had made of his place, either.

No one would have called her beautiful, certainly not in the way Carla had been. Her straight, brown hair was an overgrown soldier's cut and her eyes would have looked perfectly natural glaring at him over the barrel of a gun. There was nothing soft, passive, or giving about her or her body. What she wanted, she took - and aggressively, too. Wrestling with her, Boone felt he was in a fight for the upper hand that he ultimately lost.

Afterwards, though, unselfconscious in her nudity and stretched out comfortably on the bedspread beside him, she let him look. Invited him to explore, too, though he was reluctant to at first. While the tequila had pushed it back temporarily, the old self-hatred was ebbing back into him.

As if she'd read his mind, she said sleepily, her eyes closed, "There's another bottle in the drawer there. Help yourself."

Where the sun hadn't touched her, her skin was pale and almost unscarred. He found a tiny cut on the inside of her arm and what looked like a burn on the small of her back, a patch of shiny skin the size of his palm.

"Laser?" he asked, brushing his fingers over it and taking another drink.

She sighed. "Plasma splash. An accident, if you can believe it. I'm not sure I do."

"That must have hurt," he said inconsequentially. _Who is this?_

"Yes." She rolled over to look at him, propped up on one elbow. "I'm leaving tomorrow, you know."

He nodded. He had expected it. It was better this way. If she stayed, he might find himself making another mistake and he wasn't sure he could take that.

"I'll slip out early. Set off due west. Hopefully throw off whoever's following if they've got an eye on the town."

"I'll see you as far as the highway." _Now's your chance to ask_.

She smiled, tapping a finger on the bottle he still held. "Sure. If you're not too tired. Stay with me tonight?"

In answer, he sat up and replaced the whiskey in the drawer, looking for his clothes in the dark. "No. I'm used to sleeping alone."

Making a show of modesty, she pulled the sheet up over her chest and stared meditatively at the ceiling, arms crossed behind her head. "As soon as I'm done with this courier business, I'm going to do things, Boone. Big things. Does that sound like something you'd like to be a part of?"

He didn't answer. He'd been hoping she'd ask, and afraid at the same time. What did he really know about this woman, anyway? Only that she had been willing to participate in a vengeance-killing on the word of a stranger. That he wanted nothing more than to say 'yes' scared him. He said nothing.

"I understand," she said quietly. "You need time. I'll come through Novac again, I'm sure. If you change your mind…"

Boone left before he could commit himself, knowing that it was already too late, and that she knew that too.

o - o - o - o - o

With a nod to him, she squared her shoulders and left, cutting straight across the median toward the circuitous western route she'd plotted through the hills. It was little more than an animal trail, too rugged for the caravans to navigate. _Keep off the roads,_ he'd warned her. _If anybody's after you, that'll make their job harder_. _If they come knocking here, I'll deal with them._

Boone sat on an empty crate and watched her disappear into the early morning, wishing that he'd insisted. Despite their casual agreement, part of him suspected that she'd never be back, that the woman who called herself "Martus" was a flash-in-the-pan miracle, a rare stroke of luck in his life that wouldn't be repeated.

Losing sight of her as the elevation dipped, he turned his glare on the dinosaur looming above the town, hating the prospect of weeks and months spent up there. At least he'd get to survey the patch of ground where Jeannie May had died, but this was cold comfort. If Martus didn't come back, he didn't know how much longer he could stay, knowing what he did now about the heart of the town. _Who else knew?_ he wondered bitterly.

"Boone?"

He blinked and she was back, standing in front of him as though she had never left. "What?" he snapped, more angrily than he had intended.

She fiddled with a loose thread on her cuff, avoiding his eyes. "I didn't want to admit this before, but I _am_ afraid. I don't want to get run down by the likes of them in the middle of nowhere. I need someone to watch my back." She cocked her head and looked up at him hopefully. "What I'm saying is that… I would very much like you to come with me now. Not later. I'd give you a cut, of course," she added hastily. "Thirty percent of the Sloan and House jobs both."

Boone wondered privately how much of this was rehearsed, an act designed to tug at his conscience. _Most_, he decided, _but not all_. He was almost grateful that she was letting him do her a favor. Didn't want her to know how much he'd needed that invitation. He stood up to cover his confusion. "Give me half an hour," he said roughly. "I got to pack and tell Andy he's on duty for the next while. Tell Manny to watch out for strangers."

Her smile actually reached her eyes this time and the relief in her voice was almost genuine. "Thanks. I don't want to be a damsel in distress or anything, but knowing I won't be alone makes me feel a lot better."

He turned to go, then stopped and rounded on her. "Just so you know, last night's _not_ going happen again. No offense, but that was a mistake. Understand?"

She flushed and ducked her head, scuffing her boots in the sand, off-balance for the first time since they'd met. "Sure. Yeah. No problem. We'll keep things professional. Avoiding the tequila will be a good start." Turning her back on him and dropping onto the crate he'd just abandoned, she pulled out some jerky. "I'll wait for you here."

The scowl never left his face as he went about the necessary steps of severing ties, but inside Boone felt lighter than he had in months. He didn't know where this courier would lead him - the dream she'd spun for him had been a vague one - but it _had_ to be better than this.

o - o - o - o - o

By all appearances, the Goodsprings saloon was a happening place - even from their lonely shelter on the hill in an old fueling station, Boone could hear laughter, shouting, and the occasional sound of glass breaking. He didn't resent the the woman's need to stay clear, however.

"Are they your only enemies?" he asked, after watching her clean and break down her laser pistol with a meticulous lack of urgency.

"They aren't my enemies," she said contemptuously. "I don't even know who _they_ are. It could have been anybody holding this package. It's just my luck that it's me."

Boone tilted his head, looking at her. "_Do_ you have any enemies? I need to know if I'm going to be watching your back."

She hesitated, then shook her head. "No. Nothing else is following me. That's the one thing I can count on: a clean break with my past. Can everybody say the same? Can _you_?"

Once again, Boone found himself shaken by the cynical, knowing look in her eye. It made him forget his vow to say nothing, admit nothing, to this creature.

"There's no such thing as a clean break. Not for me. You pay for it now or you pay for it later, but there's no getting away. That's what I believe." _If it weren't for the Legion, I'd have no enemy but myself_.

She stopped sorting through her ammo for a moment and smiled oddly. "Well. We'll see, won't we? Stay with me, and you might be surprised at how far we get."

o - o - o - o - o

Two travelers arrived at the 188 around noon, reeking of deathclaw cover-scent and twitching from recent stealth-boy use. They paid for their food with NCR scrip, currency that the cook hemmed and hawed over accepting.

Veronica Santangelo watched them with undisguised curiosity. She liked to time her visits to the 188 Trading Post to coincide with the lunch hour, hoping to catch strangers stopping by for a meal on their way to or from the city. Faraway people, places, and news spoke to her in a way that the dreary backgrounds of her own life did not. For this reason, she didn't hesitate to take a spot beside the young couple at the outdoor restaurant's only table.

"Hi there, trying the sandwich? You're brave. Sam _says_ it's iguana, but you know what? I've never seen an iguana here in Nevada. Not one. Tastes good, though." She addressed this to the young woman on her left, taking in her measure at a glance: the clear skin, healthy teeth, and solid build suggested 'vault-dweller,' but her air of confidence spoke to something more. Across the table, her companion - a mercenary with a soldier's red beret - regarded Veronica warily.

The woman broke the silence. "It's not bad. I've had worse." Her precise and educated tones were clipped and cold. It was not a response that invited further conversation, but Veronica persisted.

"Oh, me too. Back in California, edible fungus was one of my family's staple foods. 'Course, we lived in a cave. Where are you two from?"

"The East," was her terse answer, while the soldier only frowned in response. The woman smiled tightly, then offered a small concession to politeness. "Most recently, Sloan. I'm Martus. That's Boone. We're both tired and-"

"I get it, I get it. You're like, 'who's this crazy lady, blabbering on about iguanas and mushrooms?' My name's Veronica Santangelo. I'm pretty familiar with the area. D'you need a guide?"

The newcomer stuffed the last bite of her food into her mouth and chewed it slowly before speaking. "I can _see_ the city from here. I think we can find it. Thank you."

"You might need someone to explain all the different groups. I've made a study of the various factions…"

"No. We've got it." Martus stood, revealing a laser pistol on her hip. "Are you ready to go, Boone?"

Veronica tried one last time to make a connection. "Speaking of factions, what do you think about the Brotherhood of Steel?"

The other's eyes glittered with hostile interest. "I'd peg them somewhere between power-armored boy scouts and common criminals. Dangerous has-beens with access to some antiquated technology. I'm frankly amazed they still exist out here." She turned to go, beckoning to her voiceless bodyguard. "Goodbye, Veronica."

o - o - o - o - o

Boone never knew if it was someone at the 188 that had tipped their pursuers off or if it was just their bad luck. Either way, they didn't even reach McCarran. Not even close, or the troopers on guard might have heard… and _might_ have helped. As it was, it was two against five, and - for the moment - their attackers had the advantage, having pinned them down behind a broken highway barrier, firing at them from the better cover of a low wall

At least the she-devil beside him knew what to do in a firefight. Boone had the rank-and-file's distaste for energy weapons, but he had to admit that the red bursts from the tiny gun were effective in keeping their opponents from returning fire. It was only a matter of time, however, before one of them managed to flank their position and it would all be over.

Martus had a similar idea of her own. "I have a little juice left in my stealth boy," she muttered. "If I can get the jump on them…"

"Do it," Boone muttered. "I'll distract them."

As soon as she disappeared, when there was a lull in the fighting, he yelled a question to their attackers. "What do you want? Forget the damn courier. Maybe we can come to some agreement."

"I want the Chip," came the swift answer, a slick, suave voice he hated instantly. "You and the little lady can go on your merry way, no questions asked."

Boone pretended to consider this. "I don't care what she wants. I'm not dying for this thing. How would we do the hand-off?"

"Just be a good sport and throw it this way. We'll let you walk. Don't turn around and we'll be fine and dandy."

_Right. And I'm President Kimball. _Boone picked up the first thing that came to hand - a shell casing - and lobbed it over as hard as he could. It only needed to fool them for a few seconds. If his estimate was right, all hell was about to break loose on their side.

_Pff. Pff. Pff. _When red light erupted on the other side, Boone was ready. A head popped up automatically, looking for the source of the attack, and Boone's scoped hunting rifle blew it away. _They're Khans_, he noted somewhere in the cool, collected part of his brain. _That one was, anyway._

One of them broke and tried to run. Boone cut him down automatically. Over the screaming, he could hear returning fire and that worried him. Stealth boys made you invisible - sort of - but not immune to bullets.

Taking a risk, he crossed the open space and found three men - and one blurry shape - groaning on the ground. The two remaining Khans were on their way out from the looks of it, but a slick bastard in an ugly suit was struggling to raise a fancy little gun to level despite the smoking ruin that the laser burns had made of his leg. Boone kicked the weapon contemptuously out of his hand and prepared to put him down.

"Wait." Martus reappeared, white-faced and clutching a bloody hole on her shoulder, her pistol forgotten. "Don't kill him yet. Got a question."

"Is this the best time for that?" Boone asked. She ignored him.

"You. Suit. What the _hell_?"

"Don't give it to House, baby doll. You got me, fair n' square, and I'll do right by you. Don't give it to him. Take it to the Tops. Talk to Yes Man. He'll help. Oh, he'll help, alright."

"Oh yeah, I'm _definitely_ taking instructions from _you_." She climbed to her knees and stayed there, panting. "We need to go, Boone. If he's got nothing left to say…"

"Just leave me," the man said quietly, his eyes glazing over. "I'm done. After all this time, brought down by a dame. A no-name courier at that. What did you get yourself into, Benny?"

His patience at an end, Boone pocketed the man's engraved 9mm as well as Martus' dropped laser pistol, before kneeling down to check her wound. There was no exit - just one hole to plug. Good. He did what he could with what he had, using some Med-X to kill the pain and taping a compress bandage on. Then, ignoring her stifled scream, he pulled her up, where she hung like a sack of potatoes on his arm before finding her feet.

"I can't guarantee getting you into McCarran so we're not going to waste time trying. They'd probably fix me up for old times' sake but not someone with no connection to the NCR. I'll take you to Freeside. There's a clinic there that treats everybody."

"'Kay," she said groggily, accepting his lead for once. "What about Benny?"

"What about him?" Boone said grumpily. "He almost killed you for a piece of trash. Almost killed _us_."

"I don't know. I kinda wanted… like, this long-winded monologue, where he'd tell us all his plans… then I'd come back with a witty one-liner and blow him away. Leaving him to die is anti-... hm… anti-cli-mac-tic."

"You read too many books. This is real life. Still, if it makes you happy…"

They staggered on toward the city gates in the fading light of day, leaving the man in the checkered suit with two bullets in his brain.

Just to be on the safe side.


	2. Biting the Hand

As soon as Arcade saw the shape of the gift, wrapped in an old piece of cloth, his expectations fell. Upon opening it, he couldn't feign the right level of enthusiasm. He'd never been good at that sort of thing.

"Oh. You shouldn't have."

He meant this to come out surprised and hearty, but it fell a little flat. He was tired - hell, they were both tired - and their lack-luster "date" had already been delayed an hour by _paperwork_, of all things. Dinner had been a bowl of thin soup from the communal stewpot and it had been as unappetizing as always. He knew before he'd finished speaking that he'd hurt Ignacio's feelings and he immediately tried to backpedal. "It's a special gift. It must have set you back. Thank you. What I meant to say is… I don't really drink."

"Maybe you should, you jackass," the smaller man muttered. "It's _wine_ \- you told me once that you liked good wine. This is from before the War. What could be better?"

_What could be better than irradiated, two-hundred-year-old vinegar? _Arcade mused. Of course, Ignacio knew nothing about viniculture, and had only thought to make him happy. _That_ Arcade appreciated very much and he tried to show it. "It's amazing that it's still intact. I'm positive I've never tried such an old vintage."

Partially appeased, Ignacio grinned. "What are you waiting for? Let's pour out a glass. I brought a corkscrew. Had to borrow it from that lady ghoul in the courtyard."

"I'm on call, Ignacio," Arcade reminded him. The chances that he'd be asked to do anything at this late hour were slim, but he stood on the principle of the thing. "Besides, drinking isn't allowed at the Fort." He was trying to avoid the painful moment of opening the wretched bottle.

Just like that, the chill that had lingered between them of late was back. "Well, if you could bring yourself to ask the pointy-haired taskmistress for one night off, this wouldn't be a problem. We could _be_ somewhere, in private, not sitting in your stinking tent."

Ignacio wasn't exaggerating. Filled with sachets, jars, and drying bunches of desert plants, the tent did have a distinct, musky odor, one that Arcade had long since stopped noticing, but which his very occasional guests found offensive. It wasn't his preference to have his research space be the same as his living space, but there wasn't much option. He was already privileged in having a room of his own - unlike most residents of the Fort - and he had strong feelings about giving up his privacy.

Trying to be hospitable, Arcade opened the bottle, smelled it, and filled his only glass, taking a polite and very tiny sip before he handed it to Ignacio. As he'd suspected, it was pure vinegar, thick with the sediment kicked up by the walk from the Followers' lab on the Strip. Feeling like an asshole for the gesture, he shook his head. "You don't have to drink that. I'm sorry. After two hundred years in less-than-ideal storage, it was inevitable."

Ignacio tipped him a mocking toast before setting it down, "To your good health." Then he sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Happy birthday."

Arcade heard the note of weary indifference in his tone; it was one he'd noticed more and more often in recent months. They'd been struggling for a long time now, but really the problems had begun as soon as the newness of their relationship had worn off. Their respective schedules were a problem, true, but the fault lay almost entirely in Arcade's court. His heart beat faster as he opened his mouth to try to fix the gulf between them. "There's something I'd planned to tell you tonight. Something I've been putting off ever since we met." Now that he'd come to the moment of truth, he didn't know if he _could_ go through with it.

Ignacio sat up straight, attentive and wary. "I'm listening."

"I told you my father was a caravan guard who was killed in gang-war crossfire near New Reno. That's not true. I told you I was born in Klamath. That's not true either." Terror made his mouth cotton-dry and he choked on his confession, reaching first for the glass of vinegar, and then for his canteen. He wished then that he _was_ drinking tonight. It might have helped. "The truth is… I've been lying to you since the day we met." He'd rehearsed this for a week, and now felt as if he were reciting a script. It didn't even feel true to _him_ anymore. He wished it weren't.

Ignacio rolled his eyes. "Obviously. I'm not stupid. Why would you think it mattered? Why would you think I _cared_ who your father was?" The scientist was shaking his head. "Honestly, you're years too late for this, Arcade. While I'm quite curious, naturally, there's nothing you can say that gives us back that lost time. Too little, too late."

Surprised and wounded, his script off-track, Arcade went on the defensive. "I had my reasons. My secrets are dangerous to me-"

"You should have trusted me," Ignacio interrupted heatedly. "Did you think I was going to report you? I _know_ you, Arcade. Whatever you were in the past - and I have trouble imagining you as any kind of criminal - you're a goodhearted man. A pompous ass, but an essentially ethical one."

"-and dangerous to you," Arcade finished, not to be deterred. He found himself on his feet for some reason. "Do you actually want to know, or do you just want to call it quits here and now? I don't want to tell you if you're finished, no matter what." This was, quite possibly, the worst thing he could have said - it sounded damn childish, for a start - and fear made it sound like an ultimatum.

Ignacio stood up, too. "I won't have my affections blackmailed with the truth. If this is the way you feel-"

It was at that moment that Julie Farkas stormed through the tent flap without even announcing herself, already talking a mile a minute. She never did announce herself first. Arcade made a mental note to talk to her about that. Again. "Got a through-and-through gunshot wound for you, right shoulder. Might have missed bone, but bleeding's a problem. I need you to get in there fast." She noticed the bottle and the glass on the table and a muscle in her jaw twitched. "Are you _drinking_?"

Already reaching for his tools, Arcade shook his head. "No. I'm good. Let's go." Following her, leaving Ignacio behind, his mind was already on his work. "Who is it? A local?" Gang violence was a recurring problem, and they'd treated all of the King's men by now. Some of them more than once.

"No. Never seen her before. The guy who brought her in says she's a courier."

o - o - o - o - o

"I need better light, Julie." Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Arcade knew that Ignacio was probably on his way out, that he might never come back, but he pushed the thought away. This wasn't the time. Compartmentalize. Focus.

"Working on it!" she snapped.

Surgery in the Old Mormon Fort was a chancy operation at the best of times, but at night it got downright difficult. Fortunately, this seemed simple enough. The patient might die, but she would do so simply.

He looked down at her, noticing that someone had applied a soldier's standard-issue compress bandage to the wound. How clean it had been was an open question, but it _had_ kept her from bleeding out.

He took in her specs at a glance, the relevant and the irrelevant. The stranger was young, about twenty. Healthy, other than the hole through her shoulder, with clear skin and eyes; her hair and teeth spoke to a privileged early life. A vault-dweller, he decided. On the one hand, that was good: she'd be more robust than the average Wasteland waif; on the other hand, she'd be more susceptible to the effects of pathogens and radiation.

To his surprise, she was conscious. One of his colleagues had already dulled the pain for her - thank God they actually _had_ med-x in stock at the moment - and she was watching him closely, bleary suspicion in her eyes.

"I'm Dr. Gannon," he said shortly. "I'll be treating your wound. Hold still if you can."

She obeyed, though helping hands on either side made sure of this while Julie held the flickering light overhead. Arcade probed for shattered bones and fragments of cloth. It could have been worse. She'd probably keep the arm, he decided, though it would never be the same as before. The bullet had missed the brachial artery, or she'd already be dead.

He began to apply strategic injections of stimpak fluid, mindful not to adhere the wrong tissues to one another with their accelerated healing effect. He didn't want to risk another surgery to repair such accidents. As he did this painstaking job, she tried to make conversation. He hated when they did that.

"This is my punishment, isn't it?" Regretful and a little slurred, it was so quiet that he almost missed it.

"Mmhm. Yeah." _There's a muscle she'll want to use again. Better repair it._

"I didn't mean to do it. I was just doing what they said. I didn't even know the full details. That wasn't for me to know. I'm _sorry_."

"Then you're forgiven. _Ignosco tibi._ Be quiet." Arcade did not like being a confessor. Julie never asked him to hold vigil over the dying or counsel the mentally disturbed. He was inadequate to that sort of care. Everybody knew it.

The woman tried to laugh, but it turned into a breathy gasp. "It's… ironic that _you_ should offer me forgiveness, Dr. Gannon. I think. Not sure yet. But you can't. No one can." She jerked against restraining hands when he accidentally brushed a nerve, making him drop the slippery tendon he'd been trying to heal.

"I don't think you know what 'ironic' means. _Don't move_."

"I don't think _you_ know what it means," she shot back nonsensically, stubbornly contentious, but finally drifting off. "Trust me on this."

"Do we have any more med-x?" he asked his colleagues irritably without looking up. He was almost done, but he had no interest in continuing this pointless dialogue.

"Finish the job, Arcade," Julie said sharply. "She's unconscious now. She won't bother you anymore. When you have a frightened patient on your table, you _talk_ to them. It's basic decency, you ass."

o - o - o - o - o

Arcade had a miserable week after his disastrous date with Ignacio. He'd been to the Strip twice since then, borrowing the Followers' one, tattered pass, only to be told by an unsympathetic assistant that the scientist was out. He supposed they had broken up. Probably for good this time. Teach him to try and break the promise he'd made to his dying mother. Never again.

Irritable and depressed, he was less than thrilled when one of his patients - the courier who'd been shot - barged into his tent one morning six days later. He preferred it when they were unconscious when he got to them and left him alone afterwards.

Yet there she was. Cheerful and ambulatory, with good color in her cheeks. To give her credit, she at least knocked on the tentpole, waiting for his "Come in!" to step inside.

She blinked in the dim light, waiting for her eyes to adjust. He put his latest sample aside with a sigh and she greeted him enthusiastically. "Dr. Gannon? I came to thank you. Julie said you might have saved my life. She also implied that I should tell you in person. That you would appreciate it."

_Thanks for that, boss_. "Julie likes her little jokes. I did my job. It was nothing." He willed her to go away.

She smiled. "Not to me. I couldn't even feel my arm when I came in. It's still in rough shape, but I can lift it a few inches now."

"It was a routine procedure. Routine around here, anyway. Julie probably could have done it herself. _Vade et amplius iam noli peccare._ Go in peace and sin no more." _Maybe if I go apologize - and tell him everything - he'll forgive me._

She seemed unperturbed by the rudeness. "Well, I appreciate it, however routine it might have been. I'd never been shot before, at least not with a ballistic weapon." She stood there, looking around the tent, eyes lingering on the heaps of native plants that he kept in poorly-organized piles on his desk. She didn't say anything about these, but her eyes lit up when they fell upon the book which lay on his pillow. "_The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_? That was one of my favorites when I was a kid."

_You _are _a kid_, he thought. He hoped she wouldn't ask to borrow it. "Really? Not many people can say that. Not many people can _read_ these days, for that matter. Congratulations."

She took this as an invitation and stepped further inside, examining each title on his shelf, running a finger down the spines and making him squirm at the intrusion. "Most of these have nothing to do with medicine. You have broad interests, huh? You would have liked my vault."

In spite of his apathy, he found himself slightly intrigued. "Which vault? Where?"

Some of her good humor faded as a faraway look came into her eyes. "Number 116. Maine. We had a lot of books there and not much else. An altogether very educated enclave. As it turns out, though, the pen is _not_ mightier than automatic weapons and explosives. That vault is gone now."

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling real sympathy now, even as his heart automatically skipped a beat at her choice of words. He knew what it was like to lose family and home. The true oddness of her statement struck him. "That's _extremely_ far away. How did you get here?" He tried to imagine this girl crossing an nigh-endless wilderness, and found he couldn't. Not alone. Almost nobody made that trip and lived to tell about it. The east coast had as well have been on the moon.

Her smile was back as if it had never left, but there was a peculiar twist to it now. "Well, the trains weren't running and the airplanes were grounded, so I walked. Where are _you_ from, Dr. Gannon? You don't have the look of a native. Too clean. Too… tall." She peered closely at him and he looked away with a grimace. The last thing he needed was for a lonely girl to try flirting with him.

"West of here," he said automatically. "If you'll excuse me…"

She refused to take the hint. "You can be specific. I know United States geography," she told him with childish pride. "We learned about it in school."

He gave her the well-practiced lie. "Klamath. A little settlement - though it's grown bigger now - in what used to be Oregon. If you'll excuse me, Miss…"

"Martus," she supplied helpfully.

"Miss Martus, I have work to do. If you don't mind-"

"Of course, of course. Nice to meet you, doctor. Maybe we can talk again someday. Anybody who saves my life - anybody who likes Arthur Conan-Doyle, for that matter - is good in my book." She winked at him and left, leaving him to his melancholy musings. In ten minutes, he had all but forgotten the interruption.

o - o - o - o - o

The courier lingered at the Old Mormon Fort for a few more days and Arcade kept a close eye on her, as one would a spider on the ceiling. That she lingered wasn't unusual - the Followers fed and housed their patients to the best of their ability, with the result that many had to be encouraged to go on their way when they were well. Others feigned or even created medical problems to gain admission. This one was different, however. She contributed a handful of caps every night for food, exercised her healing limb diligently, and showed no signs of malingering.

Arcade's earlier hostility softened slightly when he saw no more of the man that had brought her in. A friendless woman in a strange land would have a hard time of it, no matter where she was, and Vegas in particular was no place for an outsider. When he saw her in earnest conversation with Julie on the fourth day, he expected to learn that she was petitioning for shelter. Perhaps a job. Well. At least this one was literate. The Followers could do worse. They often had.

"What did she want?" he asked his boss later.

"She wanted to know what we needed. What Freeside needed. How she could help. Even if nothing comes of it, it's a refreshing change from the usual self-centeredness." Julie still looked puzzled, as if a Brahmin had learned to talk.

He nodded reluctantly. The Followers saw nothing but need, it seemed, and had precious little to give in return. Any support - however small - was welcome. Still...

"She said some odd things under the knife," he said slowly. "You may not have been listening. She's a strange one. I'm not convinced her intentions are entirely noble. What do we really know about her?"

Julie stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. "Arcade, I don't want to hear it. I don't care if she's the devil incarnate. I'm having to make three days worth of supplies work for a week. Last night, we ate broth made from day-old bones and a few ears of maize. _We can't go on like this_. You know that - you think you do, anyway - but it's worse than you realize."

"I'm just concerned about the _associations_," he said primly. His concern was hypocritical, he knew, but Julie wasn't to know that. "There are people you wouldn't approach for help, after all. The Garrets, for instance." She said nothing, and he pressed the point. "Let me talk to her. Wheedle information out of her. She thinks we're friends - God knows why! - and she might reveal more than she intends."

Julie threw up her hands with frustration. "Fine. If you have time to waste, talk to her. If you drive her away, however, I won't be happy. Feel free to imagine the punishment work I'll devise for you."

o - o - o - o - o

Arcade approached the courier where she was sitting on the ground, lazily juggling a palm-sized stone between two hands and wincing when she took the weight with her injured arm.

"How's it feel?" he asked by way of a greeting.

"It hurts, but I can move it. Lucky thing I know how to shoot left-handed, though." She didn't stop the exercise, but gave him a welcoming nod. "What can I do for you, Dr. Gannon?"

He had intended to say something subtle and clever, but what came out was a threat. "What are your intentions with Freeside? If you mean to cause trouble for the locals, you'll find an adversary in me." He regretted this opening sally as soon as he'd finished speaking. Could he have been anymore goddamned _dramatic_?

She stopped juggling and looked at him for a long moment. Then she whistled. "I would _love_ to know what I said when I was out of my head. Clearly, it made an impression. Since I don't remember, however, I can't answer for it." She looked at him reprovingly. "You can't hold me accountable for what I said in delirium. You should know better."

"_In vino veritas_. 'A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts.' Same goes for med-x and bloodloss… er, sometimes. Other times it's complete nonsense. But you haven't answered the question."

"I'm ambitious. Also utilitarian. I don't think every problem has a peaceful solution. In some ways, this does indeed put me at cross-purposes with people like you." She sat up straighter and Arcade noticed a laser pistol clipped to her belt, something he'd missed until now. Unconsciously, his hand rose to make sure of his own weapon, safely hidden under his labcoat. With an effort of will, he let it drop to his side.

"You think?" he asked helplessly, throwing as much sarcasm as he could into the question. She went on as if she hadn't heard.

"_However_, my plans also assume a friendly, supportive civilian population." Her tone was dry and businesslike. "Based on my initial observations - limited in scope by my weakened state thus far, I'm afraid - one way to this city's heart runs through this very compound. Therefore, I've decided I'll be a friend of the Followers, even if I'm not Followers material myself." She looked up expectantly, for all the world like she wanted his approval.

He stared back incredulously. "_What_? Who _are_ you? Where did you come from?"

She didn't miss a beat. "Martus, vagrant and courier. Former vault-dweller. Exactly what I appear to be. Who were _you_ before you joined the Followers, Dr. Gannon?" She grinned cheekily. "We all have a past, but I don't think it needs to follow us forever. The future - mine and the Mojave's both - is what concerns me."

The conversation had gotten away from him, fast, and Arcade was afraid without knowing why. He was also angry, and this made him throw caution to the winds. "I have nothing to be ashamed of. Can you say the same?"

"What's shame?" she countered coldly. She'd given up juggling and the stone lay in her lap. "An avoidable emotion. A burden for the weak-minded. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't help. I refuse to feel guilt, particularly..." Her face reddened and, for the first time since that first night, she looked like the child she was. "Particularly for something that wasn't my fault!"

"Is this guy bothering you?" a voice growled from behind him. Arcade wheeled around to find a soldier in a red beret cracking his knuckles and glaring at him menacingly.

"No, Boone," the courier said, once more at peace. She climbed painfully to her feet. "We were just having a philosophical discussion. As friends do. The good doctor is a learned man. A true diamond in the rough." She gave an astounded Arcade an ironic salute with her left hand. "Until later, _mon cher ami_. I have an appointment on the Strip."

o - o - o - o - o

Boone had never taken the regular entrance to the Strip. The monorail connecting McCarran to the glitzy entertainment district allowed boozy, restless soldiers on leave to come and go freely at the casinos, bypassing the local rabble entirely. Now, without his uniform to justify him, he found himself facing the formidable gate guard with no authority whatsoever. Martus, for all that she'd never been there, showed no hesitation.

"I'm a courier. You'll find my papers in order."

"You may enter," responded the robot. "_He_ must stay behind unless he has a passport. Or if," the robot added doubtfully, "he can pass a credit check."

She shook her head and tapped the arm in a sling meaningfully. "_No._ I almost died for this package. My protection goes where I go. If Mr. House wants his merchandise, he needs to agree to my terms. If he doesn't, I walk. See if I can find a more accommodating buyer."

The securitron waited, as if for a message only it could hear, while its processors whirred and groaned, the screen displaying a generic officer's face staring blankly ahead. Just when Boone was about to back away and tell Martus he'd hunker down in a local watering hole and wait for her, the official face disappeared, replaced by a jovial cowboy with a voice to match.

"Hey there, little lady. Boss man's been all kinds of worried about you. You and this gentlemen are welcome here anytime. Test your luck on fortune's wheel. Take in a show. But before you do that, pay us a call at the Lucky 38. You won't regret it. Scout's honor." With that, the cowboy was gone, and the robot - an ordinary securitron again - waved them both inside.

The Strip was exactly as Boone remembered it: bright, loud, and busy, full of the happy and the miserable going about their lives. Lost in the moment, the last few years melted away, and Boone was once again free of the weight that bore him down. On one corner, a young man advertised the dinner special at the UltraLuxe; on another, a blonde woman, her face turned away from him, beckoned seductively to a pair of drunken troopers.

Boone's breath caught in his throat at the sight. "_Carla_." He had taken two steps toward her before a hand fell on his shoulder. He shook it off with a growl, glaring at Martus, but when he glanced longingly back at the woman, he saw only a stranger. It wasn't his wife. Didn't even look like her. Just a common whore.

For a moment, all of it had felt like a bad dream.

o - o - o - o - o

Yeah, it was _okay_. For a starter home, anyway. A coat of paint, some new wallpaper, and a little elbow grease, and it'd be livable.

Looking up at the casino tower, the undisputed Queen of the Mojave's chess game, Martus grinned. Give her six months, and she'd own the place. _Maybe_ she'd let its former tenant live - properly neutered, of course - and maybe not. Her retinue, her soldiers and other accessories, could live on the lower floors. The penthouse suite would be hers, however. Maybe Boone would stay there with her. He had his uses, certainly.

She glanced at him and found him staring, not at the Lucky 38, but at one of the Strip's many prostitutes. Irritated, she tapped him on the shoulder. He snapped out of his reverie, the expression on his face stricken and guilty behind the shades.

"You can go sightseeing later, Boone," she said sternly. "For the moment, I need you focused. _Capisci_?"

Without waiting for an answer, Martus took the lead and he followed obediently. Under her breath, too quietly for him to hear, repeated her mantra as she advanced on doors that hadn't opened to the public in centuries. _Show no weakness. Admit no uncertainty. Seize every advantage_. This described the attitude that had kept her alive for the last five years. This would give her the first real victory of her life. It would earn her safety. Security. Stability. The power to choose her own fate.

She spared the securitron at the door a curt nod, flashing her courier's paperwork at its stupid, grinning face. Inside her breast pocket was the token that bought her admission, its tiny weight heavy against her traitorously-quick heart.

The Courier was destined for greatness and this was where it would all begin.

o - o - o - o - o

An unwilling witness to the negotiations, Boone was _intensely _uncomfortable. Afraid, even. Here he was, standing in the presence of a _myth_ while his companion insulted said myth. He stood at attention, the picture of an attentive but detached bodyguard, hoping that when the inevitable lightning struck it would miss him altogether.

"Yes, hazard pay," Martus repeated back to the image on the screen with haughty condescension. "Medical bills. Time lost to recovery. I almost _died_. That's worth an extra 500 caps, surely."

The woman was clearly educated, but she wasn't particularly eloquent. She had all of the subtlety of a hammer pounding away at unyielding granite. Yet something in her arrogance projected a certain appeal, Boone had to admit - she had convinced him to follow her, hadn't she? He didn't particularly _like_ her, but he was spellbound enough to do what she said. She had the power to make things happen in the world around her, causing a slipstream that carried things along in her wake. The rush of that current filled a space in his empty life.

The back-and-forth above his head continued. Boone found it difficult to understand Mr. House's veiled hints and allusions and the glaring face on the screen never changed expression, but the long-dead entrepreneur's tone had gone from hostile to curious to almost respectful in the course of the conversation. Even so, it was still a surprise to Boone when Mr. House finally laughed and called it a draw.

"Very well, Courier. Your survival places your value high above the six who failed me. I'll take your bonus out of the pay they did not earn. You have your pound of flesh. However, you will find that I do not concede anything without demanding something in exchange. Consider this an advance upon your next contract. In short, you owe me a favor."

"A _paid_ favor, I hope," she answered, smiling victoriously. "I don't work for free." Boone wanted to gag her, to stop her from pressing her luck. He was intensely aware of the robots which formed a half-circle around them, even if she was oblivious to the danger.

"You're very bold for a mail carrier with an army of one." The anger Boone had sensed before was entirely gone. The ghost in the machine seemed satisfied with what he had bought, while Martus also believed she had won. Perhaps the two of them weren't so different, Boone thought, as odd as it seemed to compare them. They were both cutthroat opportunists in their own way, willing to do whatever it took to come out on top.

"I'd like you to consider joining my employ. As you have so graciously inquired about, the financial compensation is significant. More than that, your star would rise by my fame. Unless I miss my mark, I think that is your preferred currency."

Martus tilted her head as if she were considering it, triumph visible in every line of her body. After a few seconds of deliberation, she nodded. "I accept your offer, on a trial basis. You _are_ the unopposed regent of Vegas. You're correct in that I have ambitions of my own. Our partnership will be mutually advantageous." Forgetting his vow of impassivity, Boone gaped at her. One would think she were doing Mr. House a favor, instead of the other way around.

"Very well. First, I would like you to-"

She interrupted him, drowning out his words with a strident voice. "Hold that thought, sir. I'm _hurt_. I barely made it over here in my haste to deliver your property. Don't your employees get sick leave? I need at _least_ another week to rest this arm." She cradled the limb with an exaggerated grimace of agony. "I'll come back… let's see… would next Tuesday work? I'll put it on my schedule." She opened an invisible appointment book and waited expectantly for Mr. House's answer. Boone groaned inside and resigned himself to the fact that he was traveling with a madwoman. At least she had _chutzpah_ to spare.

"You go too far, Courier, but I make allowance for your injury. Fine. You have your week. See my city. Learn this land. Meet its people. But I'm warning you once: do not cross me. Benny was much like you. He made his own play. Had you not killed him first, his death would have been far more painful."

Martus opened her mouth again and Boone stepped on her boot, hard enough for her to feel it through the leather.

The screen turned black. "You are dismissed, you and your anxious gorilla both. You may refresh yourselves in the presidential suite. It is yours for the duration of your service to me." An ominous pause. "Do not presume _too_ much upon my patience, child. As you've intuited, I respect audacity. I employ no shrinking violets. Too much of this, however, and I will be forced to discard you as a heedless fool who walks where angels fear to tread."

To Boone's intense relief, Martus took the cue and left, taking her hard-won pay with her.

o - o - o - o - o

Arcade craved solitude, but he got precious little of it. He liked to awaken early so as to take advantage of the first rays of sunlight and the still-warm coals from last night's fire. On this particular day, however, he had been sitting there for only five minutes when the gates opened. Arcade frowned over his book, and tried to ignore the unwelcome visitor, something that became hard to do when she marched straight up to Julie's tent and announced her presence.

Barely awake at this early hour, her extraordinary hairstyle half undone, Julie stood at the threshold and stared blankly at the credit slip thrust toward her. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out. With an effort, she pulled herself together. Sort of. "What?"

Less than a day after her departure from the Fort, the courier had acquired good armor and outfitted her companion similarly. Waiting for Julie to catch up, she rolled her healing shoulder and cracked her neck, a not-too-subtle tell of impatience. "I have a few conditions, of course. Free access to medical care for me and mine. A good word about me to the community you serve. The expectation of future… favors with regard to repairing, using, and maintaining technology."

Arcade closed his book and stepped up behind the courier, more than tall enough to see over her head and shake his head meaningfully at Julie. He knew the history of their order better than anybody and he knew where this line of thinking led.

"Do you think you can _buy_ us, Martus? The Followers are completely apolitical. We don't serve the ambitions of strangers who may or may not serve our cause, particularly with regard to technology. The world's seen enough misery from people who had to win at any cost."

"_Arcade, shut the hell up for once in your life_," Julie hissed at him, voice dripping with more venom than he'd ever heard from her. "Ignore him, Martus. We accept. I'll inform you personally if we ever… reach a line we can't cross, but I trust that it won't come to that. Only a good person would follow through on a promise like this."


	3. Rubicon

Gloria Van Graff knew the look of a predator when she saw one in the wild, and well she might: it was one she saw in the mirror every morning. Martus - a bit player with potential, said the word on the street - was on the prowl, close on the heels of a big, sheepish Follower who really had _no_ business stepping into the Silver Rush. Gloria couldn't remember his name and that bothered her. It was her business, after all, to keep tabs on everybody in Freeside. He'd been in once or twice before, buying ammo with the shameful, secretive air of a married man buying a woman.

The man was oblivious to the danger behind him and Gloria took a few prudent steps backward. She didn't _like_ it when clients took advantage of the relative privacy of her premises to carry out a hit-job, but she would permit it this time. All the better to have something on Martus.

"I need fifty plasma cells," he said. "I have drained cells for exchange." He laid a bag on the counter and looked up expectantly, even as the woman behind him took another stealthy step forward.

Gloria didn't move. She exchanged a brief, understanding look with Martus and gave her the tiniest of nods.

To give the man credit, he spotted the signal and whirled around, reaching for a weapon that the Van Graff guard would have already confiscated. Instead of pulling a concealed knife on her victim, however, Martus stepped right past him, dropped another, heavier bag beside his, and placed an order of her own.

"I need as many small cells as a hundred caps will buy. Also two laser rifles on credit." She smiled at the speechless Follower. "Put this gentleman's ammo on my tab. I owe him a favor."

Until that moment, Gloria wouldn't have dreamed of extending credit to a stranger on the strength of a hundred caps and a promise. But the woman had surprised her, a rare pleasure in her grim and tortuous life. The experience was worth risking a loss. She began a new page of her ledger, noting the items. She left room for more. Something told her this one would be wanting more.

"Full name?" she asked casually. "For the record."

The woman sometimes known as the Courier smiled. "It's just Martus."

o - o - o - o - o

He hadn't always held a gun. He'd won his manhood with nothing more than a knapped-flint spear and his mother's tearful blessings; he'd completed the ritual hunt without a scratch despite the shaman's herbs fogging his mind. Twenty years gone. A lifetime ago.

The child named Palo had been quiet, so much so that the old priest had thought him softminded.

"_It's simple, boy. Take drugs. Kill a bear_."

The King smiled at a joke he would never tell. Only Pacer and a handful of the others would understand and, by mutual agreement, they never spoke of the time before. They'd left their strings of yao-guai claws on the road to Vegas, on their way to the future.

Crocker, that optimistic paper-pusher, could never understand the Kings or the King himself. Nor could Kieran or Farkas, though they had their own kind of hard-earned grit. Martus… Martus might. She was no tribal, that was for sure, but she had fought for - and won - _something_ in her short life. The King would have given a lot to know what that was.

The King decided that the woman had had waited long enough - and that _he_ had waited long to satisfy his curiosity - and he gave his man at the door the signal, not taking his eyes off the dancer on the stage, a limber little thing fresh from the desert, still smelling of sagebrush and yucca blossoms.

Martus approached with all of the confidence one would expect of leader comfortable in her own domain, and not at all like a solitary woman surrounded by strange men. The King wondered, with a transient flash of unease, if anyone had dared to pat her down for weapons. Heads would roll if they hadn't. He made sure of his own pistol, concealed in its side-holster.

"Interesting dog you have there."

_Ah. _This was familiar territory. Everyone said the same about Rex, a gift from a wealthy political refugee who had once sought sanctuary in Freeside upon fleeing his enemies in the NCR. The man had been safe as long as he was content with his humble lodgings here. The King still wondered how long he had survived after crossing into Legion territory.

"That's mah boy. Rex ain't feeling too good right now, though. Even Farkas can't do nothin'."

"Poor thing." She took the chair to his left. "I want your support and I'll make it worth your while."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. You gotta buy me dinner first. Lemme tell you how this works. First you do _me_ a favor, then Ah think about reciprocatin'."

"Sorry, but I don't have the time to wait. I've wasted too much time shoring up the Followers' shoestring operation at their speed. I think you are several degrees more… savvy than Farkas. I won't do _you_ the discourtesy of pretending to be softer than I am." She hesitated, then added in a slightly apologetic tone. "Before we go any further, you should know I have the Lucky 38."

"You _may_ have the Strip," he conceded shortly, wondering furiously if that were actually true. There _had_ been rumors, rumors he'd doubted. "But what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Freeside's a different animal. You can't buy us and box us up like House's pet tribes. You can't roll over us or you destroy the best of what we are."

"Nor do I want to." She poured herself a glass from the water pitcher that sat in front of them, crunching the last few slivers of precious ice between her teeth. "I'm a lot of not-so-nice things, but 'wasteful' isn't one of them. I want everything - and I _will_ have everything - but Freeside will remain yours to rule. I wouldn't dream of withholding that authority from you. For one thing, I'm not a micromanager. For another, this sordid little ghetto isn't near enough for me."

The King leaned back nonchalantly, studying the ceiling of the once-grand theater. People sometimes mistook his insouciance for weakness. It was an image he'd cultivated, largely for surprise it gave his enemies when he came to life.

"Ah've killed men - and women - for less cause than you've given me in the last two minutes."

"And I've killed men for no better reason than they looked at me wrong," Martus answered coldly. "You haven't looked at me yet, so no harm, no foul."

"Look," she went on, switching to a conciliatory tone. "I need to address this problem with Kieran's people and ours soon. I need a solution that benefits the people of Freeside without burning bridges with the NCR prematurely. I'll partner with you on that, as a gesture of good faith. My men are yours to command. I'll let you be the face of the operation. It won't hurt your image. That, too, would be wasteful."

She reached down and stroked Rex on his furry chin, avoiding the bulbous brain housing. "King - or would you prefer 'Palo'? - things have changed, and they will go on changing,, but they don't have to change much for you. I'm doing you a favor, can't you see?"

"Ah could kill you _right now_," he reminded her patiently, mastering his anger and astonishment easily. How _had_ she known? No one knew. Ten years ago, he would have shot first and counted the cost later. Now, though… she was a fool, but she was a fool he couldn't help but applaud. The casual way she'd referred to the people of Freeside as "ours" was a stroke of stupid genius.

"You won't," she said happily, grabbing a handful of nuts from his personal bowl and admiring the dancer's graceful movements. "I've done my research. You aren't wasteful either. You aren't hotheaded. I won't insult you by saying you're 'mine,' but you really don't have any other choice."

She was wrong. For all her bravado, for all of the power on her side, she was a child playing a game, the rules of which she had only read. She needed to learn that people weren't robots programmed for perfectly predictable outcomes. Killing her now was a choice he could live with, and he believed he could spin it as a victory, whatever she believed. But where was the fun in that?

"Courier," he began, dropping the act that had stopped being an act long ago. The more time went on, the harder this was to do, but he managed to shrug off the 'King' once again. "Let me help you do this right. I can show you where you slipped up. You said some things that Van Graff, for starters, can't stand for. Once you've had a little education, I'll be your man."

She relaxed, meeting his eyes for the first time. He recognized the insecurity buried there and knew he'd read her correctly. She reminded him of himself, years and years ago.

"Thank you, Palo. King. That's all I wanted." She brushed the salt off her hands and shook his. "You won't regret this, I swear. This is the beginning of something _magnificent._"

o - o - o - o - o

The Wrangler never closed. By longstanding habit, James and Francine Garret took it in turns to sleep. Francine chose to burn the midnight oil as she preferred to work in relative peace and quiet. Her business dealings were less flashy than James', but far more important. Tonight, she would be cleaning up James' mess. With a shotgun, if necessary.

The bar was empty when Martus arrived at the appointed hour, accompanied by a guard of four. No one knew quite how many she commanded at this point. Mister Red Beret was the only outstanding figure in a crew of faceless mercenaries and, by all accounts, he was an asset to kill for. Only Francine and the late-night barmaid, Astrid, were there to greet her. Unlike the happy hour wenches, Astrid was no beauty - her droopy eye and withered hand were the reasons Francine kept her on the graveyard shift - but she kept her mouth shut, something Francine considered the perfect quality in an employee.

The bodyguards peeled away from the Courier, leaving her alone. The newcomer didn't even look at the solicitous waitress bobbing anxiously at her elbow. "Nothing for me right now. Get _them_ what they want." She jerked her head at the table in the corner, where her right-hand man had settled with the others, his back to the corner. Martus never once took her eyes off of Francine's, and Francine furiously resisted the urge to blink and turn away.

Martus broke the silence. "So."

"So."

"I'm calling the debt in."

"You _dare_." Francine cursed James for getting her into this position, wished yet again that she had cast him out after their parents' death. But he had a way with the customers that she'd never have. For that reason, she'd tolerated him this long.

"I durst do a lot of things," Martus said mildly. She settled down on a stool, rolling her right shoulder - perhaps unconsciously - and wincing. Francine saw this and filed the information away. Any weakness, however small, was capital. She needed all the capital she could get with this one. "It's long past my bedtime. I could use some caffeine. Nuka-Cola, please. I don't have to ask you to leave the cap on."

_I could give you a "sealed" Nuka-Cola that'd put you toes up by morning_, Francine thought viciously. She didn't, though. Silently, she gave the woman a chilled drink and a handsome, engraved bottle opener. Martus flipped the cap back and offered up an ironic toast, letting a single drop fall onto the already-sticky bar.

"A libation for the fallen," she explained.

Francine ground her teeth and resolved, not for the first time, to murder her brother. He was _her_ weakness and always had been.

"How much do you want?" she growled finally. "You can't hold this over us forever. I'd throw James to the wolves long before that, last living family be damned."

"Oh, don't do that. Not caps," Martus answered thoughtfully. "I don't need more of those, not really. For now, all I ask is that you keep up your end of your bargain with the Followers and let James continue his public relations campaign. He's doing that admirably. Those things don't really cost you much."

To this, Francine stated the obvious. "That's not why you came here today."

"Well, no. A war's coming, right? When the time comes, I'll need a strong presence in Freeside and I know you have a lot more than just the Wrangler in terms of real estate at strategic points. I'll have supplies to store and men to quarter… you get the picture. Basically, I need space. I will provide the manpower to secure that space." She yawned and stretched again. "Like I said, I don't ask for much." Seemingly remembering something, she added as an afterthought, "At some point, I'll probably need your trade contacts. That's a conversation for another day, though."

"Not much? I have tenants in those spaces," Francine answered, trying not to let her rage show. "You're asking me to take a loss worth _thousands_ of caps. Not to mention render a quarter of the population homeless."

Looking exhausted under close inspection, Martus blinked at her, apparently confused. "I trust you to work that out in the next six months or so. I'll pay you _some_. I might look into hiring the NCR's Corps of Engineers to build some temporary housing on the outskirts and let you collect rent on it. Or, given the supplies and funding, the Followers could probably oversee construction..." She trailed off, apparently unconcerned with the details.

Francine was already trying to think of someone she could hire to take out this massive thorn in her side and barely heard this last part. Feeling like she had to respond somehow, she said the first thing that came to mind.

"Why did you begin with the Followers? Why do you keep going back to them? They're the weakest faction in Freeside. They have _nothing_."

Martus laughed at her. "Don't be dense, Francine. Miss Garret, I mean. Knowledge is power, France is bacon." She grinned. "My dad always used to say that. Anyway, they're the heart of Freeside and your operation is nothing but the cirrhotic liver. I need them more than you, the Kings, and the Van Graffs put together. If you can't see that…"

Francine interrupted the rambling lecture. "Who _are_ you?"

"I'm the woman who's going to own this city a year from now. Accept that and prosper. Ignore it to your peril. _Et cetera, et cetera_." She sighed and pushed herself back from the bar. "Two rooms. Dinner for one sent up, please. We'll be staying one night." She stretched her arm again. "Your brother has _issues_, Miss Garret. Try and keep his excesses in check, won't you? He's no good to us dead."

Francine had had enough. "You have what you came for. Get out of my sight_._"

Martus bowed politely, accepted the keys from Francine's trembling hand, and turned her back on her. Francine resisted the urge to put one into the base of the girl's skull, and gave her rage a different outlet. The sound of the empty coke bottle impacting the wall brought the wary men to their feet, but she ignored their reaction.

_What just happened?_

o - o - o - o - o

Major Elizabeth Kieran was having the worst day of her career (_so far_) and it wasn't even noon yet.

The crumbling watchtower wasn't even standing anymore and what remained of the King's wayward second-in-command could have been packed into a shoebox. Two unlucky privates, caught in the open when the gunfire began, lay stretched out in the dirt awaiting identification and transport to McCarran. All in all, it hadn't been a good day for anybody. Even the damned Courier was off-balance in the wake of the explosion and had reluctantly consented to allow a nervous young Follower to approach her. Her voice unnaturally loud, she yelled to her lieutenant.

"Holy hell, my _ears_. Boone, talk to her for me. You know what I want."

Kieran had met Martus three times before, all under better circumstances than this. Simmering conflicts among the locals, the NCR squatters, and the Kings had finally come to a head in the old railyard, exacerbated by the subversive actions of a rogue minority within the Kings. To give the Courier credit, it could have been far worse. At least the King had withdrawn his guns, indicating his interest in resuming negotiations when the dust had cleared.

The soldier approached Kieran, hand half-rising in a truncated salute born of old discipline. She eyed his advance warily, entertaining serious doubts about a leader who would appoint a practically-mute sniper as her ambassador. _Perhaps she has no one else she can trust._

"Craig Boone, formerly of First Recon. Ma'am."

"I know who you are. We're really going to do this now?"

He sighed, sneaking a furtive look at his mistress, who was holding her head and cursing, while the same nervous apprentice aimed a stimpak at her neck. "Guess so. She wants you to start dealing on the side, locals and squatters both. Probably other stuff later on. Said you'd know why you'd have to do it. Didn't give me the details. Talk to the King about it. He knows you'll agree." He clamped his jaws shut as if he'd said too much. Kieran guessed he wasn't one for long speeches.

"Do you have no loyalty, Sergeant? You're betraying your own people by working with this woman." She let some of her bottled-up rage boil over - against the Courier, against the refugees she was supposed to be helping, against her supervisors for dumping her in this impossible assignment. Boone didn't respond, but he tensed subtly at the accusation.

"I know," she said quietly, backtracking. "I've read your file. I'm sorry for… for what they made you do. That was a shameful mistake. But why _her_?"

Sunglasses gave nothing away. Kieran supposed that was half the point of wearing them. Boone lifted one shoulder, shifting the weight of a first-class rifle to balance more comfortable. "It's her or nothing. I'm not ready for nothing."

Kieran pitied the man - she'd heard about his wife - but pity only went so far. "The two of you will be shot without a trial," she said flatly.

He shrugged again, as if it didn't matter, and Kieran could think of nothing to say to that level of apathy. Boone was nothing more than a message on two legs. Kieran supposed she understood why Martus hadn't bothered meeting with her in person. It wasn't necessary.

"Tell her that I will meet with the King," she said at last.

"Good." There was just a hint of relief in the lines of his face. "He'll send someone out here tomorrow."

Another twitch that might have been an attempt at a salute and he turned on his heel to leave.

Already at the end of her patience, Kieran was much annoyed when another petitioner took the sniper's place, this one a Followers doctor. Ridiculously tall, he was handsome in a gloomy sort of way; she supposed that he, like most Followers, had committed himself to mourning the past. A woman for whom the future was everything, the whole ideology had never sat right with her. She forced her features into the semblance of neutral pleasantness.

"Doctor. How can I help you?"

"Do you have wounded, Major? We are prepared to help them, with the expectation of the usual compensation."

Kieran barely thought about her answer. Her mind was already on the paperwork she'd have to spend the afternoon doing and the dreaded meeting with the King. "A few," she admitted distractedly, "but none so serious that they can't wait for our own medics. The other two are beyond any help. Thank you all the same."

He nodded, but didn't heed the obvious dismissal. "Don't do whatever she wants you to do. _Please_."

She stared at him. "She wants us to feed the indigent to the best of our ability, regardless of citizenship. She has convinced me that this serves all of our interests the best. That's not something a Follower wants?"

"Oh. Huh. It is, actually." He shuffled his feet uncomfortably and looked skyward for inspiration. "It's just that I know what she's buying by twisting your arm. You're giving her Freeside on a platter and that will have certain, unavoidable consequences down the line. As benevolent as it seems, I'm not sure the ends justify the means here."

Tired of being talked down to by civilians, Kieran drew herself up haughtily. "Thank you. I'll keep your counsel in mind. The NCR can handle itself."

Again, he ignored the hint. "Can _you_?" he asked, stressing the second word slightly. "Do you think you have control over the situation with the Courier? I don't believe you do and that scares me. There's no one in this town - no one that matters, anyway - who can afford to tell her 'no'. I've been watching her since the day she staggered through our gates and I still have no idea what her game is. Julie-" Here, he looked around furtively, as if he thought his boss might be listening. "Julie can't afford to decline the Courier's offer either. Mull _that_ over, if you will. Martus can buy _anybody_." He spoke again, this time to himself, "Not me, though. I can say that much when all is said and done."

"Okay." Kieran was fascinated by this man. She had half a mind to 'invite' him in to her dismal cell of an office, to find out exactly what he knew. Or what he thought he knew. A second later, she dismissed the thought. She couldn't afford to betray how right he was. "That sounds like a personal grudge. I can't help you with that. Goodbye." Realizing that she really _ought_ to talk to Julie about the troublemaker in her midst, she called after him, "What's your name?" Either he didn't hear or he chose not to, because he kept walking until he rounded the corner out of sight.

Kieran surveyed the yard one last time and appointed two of her officers to overseeing the clean-up. Then she dragged herself inside, wondering just how she was going to write this up for her superiors. She already knew she'd have to take some creative liberties. No one at McCarran, not Crocker, not Hsu, and certainly not faraway Moore or Oliver, could understand what she had to deal with in Freeside. Here, with no Legion in sight, the NCR was fighting a losing battle.

o - o - o - o - o

A "private dining room" in Freeside's only real restaurant was more or less what you'd expect it to be: a dirty hole better suited for high-stakes poker games than for a meeting of the minds of Freeside's leaders. The air was stuffy as there was scarcely space for the ten people present: the King, Gloria Van Graff, Francine Garrett, Major Kieran, and Julie herself, each with a personally-selected guard set protectively at their back.

As uncomfortable as a sheep among wolves, Julie tried to call the clandestine meeting to order. It _had_ been her idea, after all.

"The reason I've brought you all here tonight-"

"We _all_ know why we're here," the King interrupted, his lazy drawl and relaxed body language belying a dangerous interior. "That little wildcat of a Courier. She's shook up the neighborhood. Not that Ah'm exactly complainin'. She's done me a service I'm obliged to repay."

"We're _all_ in her debt, I think," Major Kieran said stiffly. "It's put me in a particularly difficult position. She knows enough to make things… unpleasant for me with the NCR brass." Of the five, she was the clear outsider; in Freeside but not of it, she was permitted a seat in these occasional conclaves only grudgingly.

"I owe her nothing," Van Graff countered coldly. "She is someone I can't ignore, though. Her dealings with the Crimson Caravan are highly suspicious, to say nothing of her visits to the Gun Runners." Necessary but foreign influences in Freeside, the Five saw these - especially Alice McLafferty - as potential threats to their stability and relative independence. Gloria's sneer spoke to her particular animosity toward her primary competitor, the only other major arms dealer within twenty miles.

Only the female Garret twin was quiet. It was an open secret that the Courier had …procured… various illicit and scandalous goods for their seedy den, and carried out contracts that even the NCR wouldn't wink at if they knew the details. Only the Garrets knew the numbers, but everybody suspected that the outstanding bill was enormous. Certainly, James had been outrageously free with his praise of Freeside's newest populist. To hear him talk, you would have thought that the Messiah had touched down on Fremont Street.

"Even without… er, recent propaganda, the people have every reason to love her," Julie said calmly. "She gives them things that we've never been able to provide. She's accomplished more in six months than we have in years. She's got _us_ working together (well, sort of) for the first time since the last Legion incursion. She wants Freeside - that's becoming more and more obvious - but she wants Freeside in one piece. That could be… a good thing."

"That's alright for you to say, Julie. You and yours, the so-called 'neutrals,' are practically untouchable. The rest of us can't cede that kind of power openly or we'd appear weak." Kieran fidgeted uncomfortably under unfriendly eyes. "I _should_ give a full report on her to my superiors. They want to know everything about… ahem, 'prominent locals'."

Van Graff rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes, we all know you're here to spy on us. Now be quiet like a good little mole. The question is: do we let her stay? Do we have a choice at this point?"

"She's movin' on." The King was sitting upright now, every sign of lassitude gone. "She's got bigger fish to fry. She came by - just her, not that spooky sniper or her little pack of mercenaries - and told me that much. Don't know why. Without giving away everythin', she made it clear that she wants it _all_."

"All of Freeside?" Julie asked curiously. "Or all of Vegas?" She tried to laugh, but the laughter dried up in her throat. The Courier had House's ear, that was clear, but she was a fool if she thought he'd give up anything significant to a lackey.

The King grinned broadly, a terrifying sight. "All of the Mojave."

"So she's insane," Kieran piped up, the relief clear in her voice. "That's good. A local benefactor with a few screws loose and aspirations of grandeur. We can handle that if we spin it right. I could offer her NCR citizenship and an honorary role as a go-between for us and the locals." The others looked at her with unconcealed disgust and Van Graff opened her mouth to say something scorching when she was interrupted by the King.

"Ah believed her," said the King. "Mebbe not anymore, but when she was talkin'... Ah believed her. Ah'm guessin' Ah'd believe her if she started talkin' again. That's her gift."

To Julie's surprise, Van Graff nodded slowly. "I do as well. I don't know why, but I do."

Garret shook her head stubbornly. "All I see is a child too big for her britches, but it's all the same to me. The drink must flow or there'll be a riot. No one's going to disrupt that if they want this neighborhood in one piece. _Someone's_ going to shoot her one of these days, though, mark my words." By the tone in her voice, everyone could tell that she'd like to carry out the job personally.

Julie looked down at her coat where the Follower's simple emblem was stitched on. It was a little faded, true - she'd worn this coat for years and it showed in the stains and patches - but the symbol still meant everything to her. The Courier clearly thought there was room for a bunch of do-gooders in her world. She had left her fingerprints on the bread and the circuses both, grabbing a double handful to share. Julie could work with that. The Followers had worked in the shadow of secular powers before. The Courier, on the outside chance she was successful, might be no different. Unlike Caesar, she wasn't even pretending to be one of them.

"I move that we wait," she said after a pregnant pause, when she realized that the others were waiting on her for some reason. "She may be a flash-in-the-pan, but she's done us no harm thus far. She doesn't throw away what's useful to her. We're all useful to her… even you, Elizabeth. She might be crazy, but she's no fool. She knows there's no Legion defeat without the NCR and no Mojave to rule without a Legion defeat. Perhaps she will survive her own ambition and settle for the Strip when all is said and done and we can go on as we always have."

In her heart, though, Julie hoped for more. To earn the Followers the means to heal, feed, and educate the masses… she'd accept almost any deal that gave her that power. Marooned in a sea of limitless human suffering, Julie knew the means mattered less than the ends. The Mojave had taught her that.

o - o - o - o - o

"You did splendidly with our friend the Major, Boone. She was the last one. That means we're done here." Mostly recovered from the ordeal of the previous day, Martus had dragged him up to the top of the tower in the corner of the Old Mormon Fort, where they could speak without fear of being overheard. Below them, in the dimly-lit courtyard, patients, doctors, and refugees ate their scant supper. No one even looked in their direction.

"Are we?" he asked with listless curiosity.

"Look around you. Freeside is mine. The Five may not know that yet, but they will soon. They just _gave_ it to me," she marveled, as if she couldn't believe it herself. "Mr. House'll be proud."

Boone studied her face. He hadn't seen his boss's boss since that first meeting, but he could only take her at her word. She was clearly satisfied with what she'd accomplished. He nodded his agreement. _Maybe she _can_ do this. I'm certainly not going to argue._

"Okay. What's next?"

She moved closer - too close for his comfort - and stroked his bristly cheek. Her voice husky, she whispered into his ear, "How would you feel about killing some Legion?"


	4. Targeted Cruelty

"I wish I had Power Armor," Martus whispered, almost dancing with anticipation. They had every advantage over the ragtag Legion camp below - height, surprise, and even numbers, after the last batch of hires - but apparently she wished things were up close and personal. "Don't you wish you had Power Armor? I could obliterate these assholes single-handedly."

Boone could hear the capital letters when she spoke about the weaponized suits, a loving, reverent tone that he associated with the deeply religious and fanatical. He no longer wondered about this passion; no doubt there was an explanation, one she might provide someday, but he didn't care.

"No I don't. Would mess with my eye. Focus. There are prisoners down there."

She clicked her tongue dismissively. "Prisoners from _Nipton_. Even if they joined us, I couldn't count on their loyalty."

"That's not what-...Look, just get into position and wait for my signal." He didn't give her orders often. Only when it was necessary, when she needed to defer to his experience. Whatever the mercenaries thought of their arrangement, _she_ was in charge and Boone was nothing but her spokesman and occasional advisor.

She saluted him smartly in a way she knew he hated. "Yes _sir_."

_She actually does listen to me. Sometimes. Even if it's all a joke to her_. Boone took his perch and made sure of his cover once again. The "signal" was his first shot and he knew exactly where it was going. The _decanus_ would be the first to fall, hopefully cutting off the head of a panicked defense. Arrogant to think they were safe out here. The sparseness of the NCR patrols had given them a false sense of security. Boone had spotted signs of their travel and smoke from their fire miles away.

_Right. Here we go. One more step toward Vulpes Inculta._ The Wild Fox had already been a day ahead of them when they'd arrived to mop up Nipton. The last surviving legionary had told them that much before the end. Given the license and the opportunity to hunt Legion, Boone had chosen three targets from a host of worthies: Caesar, Lanius, and Vulpes. The Courier had promised him those.

o - o - o - o - o

The attack - it had been more of a massacre, really - went off without a hitch. As Boone had predicted, deprived of a leader, the enemy camp was in disarray from the very first shot. He found it disappointing how easily they died, all the more so when he found no survivor to interrogate.

_If only they were all so incompetent._

Stifling his irritation that overzealous shooting hadn't left even one alive to question, Boone left the men rifling through tents and packs for coins and food and joined the Courier, who was ransacking the officers' tent in search of communiques, information they or their NCR allies could use.

"What now?"

Small victories didn't interest him. He was impatient to set his sights on a new target. It excited him in a way that nothing else did now and reminded him why he had joined their team of two in the first place.

She held up a finger to tell him to wait, frowning at the papers in her hands.

"This stuff's weeks old. It makes me wonder if these guys were rogue or lost or something. They were certainly incompetent. We'll get nothing useful here." She looked up. "The prisoners?"

"Disappeared as soon as we cut them loose. Couple of Powder Gangers, from the look."

She scowled. "Is it too late for you to shoot them in the back? You know we'll have to rout that prison at some point." Reading his expression, she smiled as if it had been a joke. "Never mind. Your fondest wish is my command: Cottonwood Cove. It's finally time."

He shuddered inside but stayed impassive. "Too many," he grunted. It was a fact. He'd had to admit that many months ago, had told himself the same every day since. All of First Recon wouldn't have been enough. In that convenient nest, high above the buying and selling, he had thought himself ready to die, but had failed even at that.

"It actually isn't," she said apologetically. "Scouts say they've withdrawn a quarter of their force, believing the NCR was stretched too far in the southeast to worry about. Overconfident, just like these bastards were. We have twelve hand-selected Rangers ready to mobilize at a word. We'll take it tomorrow or I'll eat my hat. Either that, or I'll be dead."

Surprise jolted him into asking a real question. "When did you arrange _that_?"

Martus looked almost guilty, a foreign expression for her. "The Mojave Outpost. I didn't want you to be distracted in the meantime. I know Cottonwood is what you really wanted. You picked our targets and that one never came up. It's a _present_ for you, Boone. You're _welcome_," she chided, when he didn't respond immediately.

"I never said anything…" He stopped and cursed himself for a fool. They'd talked targets up and down the river in the weeks since they'd left Freeside. Not once had he brought the slaver's port to her attention. He might as well have circled it in red on her map.

She kicked one foot against another, knocking off some caked-on mud, studying steel-capped toes with great interest. "Yeah. Anyway, let the guys eat, then get them ready. We'll leave as soon as possible." She cleared her throat. "I need your head in the game for this one. No going AWOL on me yet."

Boone obeyed stiffly. His body could take orders even when his mind would not, thanks to his time in the army. He had proven it before.

_How can I shoot from there? How can I not?"_

o - o - o - o - o

Boone stopped shooting when the last of the red bodies lay still. Half an hour later, Martus joined him on the peak, breathing hard from the steep climb. She'd already shed her armor somewhere, along with every weapon except her sidearm.

"We lost two," she admitted, a little glumly. She tried to wipe sweat from her face and left a smear of mud or blood on her forehead. She tried again, making it worse, before giving up. "One of ours and one of theirs. Ranger Milo is pissed. I didn't say it to his face - now's not the time - but we got off easy. I think he'll admit as much once he's cooled down. The NCR should have taken this place a long time ago. If they don't hold it, I'm going to give someone a piece of my mind. Reinforcements are coming soon. You ask me, Forlorn Hope should relocate here."

Boone barely heard her. Despite protection, his ears were still ringing. His arms ached from holding his rifle for so long. He knew the mechanism was leaving imprints on his clenched palms, but he didn't want to put it down. He _had_ taken the shots after all, lots of them. Even without a spotter, he thought two in three had hit home. He'd killed Legion this day, but he couldn't find any triumph in it, only disgust and despair. Martus was right. It _had_ been easy.

_All I needed was two dozen men. I could have saved her. Why didn't I ask for help?_

"The loot's pretty good. Our guys have no reason to complain. I told them to leave the explosives where they were, though. Milo says we'll need them later. The Dam. God, I love these Rangers."

_Ten months too late. If I dug in the sand, would I find the grave or did they throw her in the water?_

"A couple of slaves got caught in the crossfire. It's a shame. There's still about twenty women and children to escort as far as Nelson." She coughed. "You'll recognize some of them from Novac, Boone. They got hit hard a week or so ago. I only just found out," she added, a little too quickly.

Fresh guilt clawed at him. _I should have been there_. _Who was it on duty? Manny? Andy? Fucking Cliff Briscoe?_

Martus _could_ be sensitive, if she chose. Sort of. "You probably would have died too, if you'd been there. It's not your fault. It's the damned Legion. That's why we're doing what we're doing. We saved 'em, Boone. We couldn't have done it without you watching over us."

"You believe that," he said tonelessly. "You really believe we saved them." _Too late, too late, too late._

She raised one eyebrow. "Well, yeah. They're _alive_. The one-man bomb squad down there is disarming their collars. There's one pregnant woman in a bad way, but the rest should make it alright. Give them a couple of days rest and our NCR pals will start herding them to Vegas to join the other refugees. I've made sure the Followers are ready for an influx. Don't let it be said I don't take care of my people."

"They're going to wish they died here." It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Was it true? It didn't _sound _true when he said it aloud to another person. Apparently, Martus was thinking the same thing.

Her eyebrows shot up. "You believe _that_?" He didn't often surprise her. She surprised him in turn with actual anger, rather than her usual coquettish pique. "Then I guess you better go down and shoot them. Not sure if it's more humane to kill the mothers or the children first. You decide. Heck, you can probably get most of them from up here."

Boone wondered if she realized how close to death she was in this moment. She was a decent scrapper when she had to be, but her strength wasn't in fighting, let alone in close quarters. More than that, she was tired from the fight and relaxed in his presence. He studied the space between them, the movements that would get his hands around her neck. Let their allies find two bodies up here and think what they would.

"I watched bandits rape the women in my vault," she said meditatively, not noticing the danger, looking out at the river instead. "Also some of the men that survived the initial purge. Something - some principle, maybe? - kept their hands off of the children. Which I guess I looked like, even if some of the younger, curvier ones weren't so lucky. Perks of being a late bloomer. Mama always told me I'd grow up pretty, that I just had to be patient."

She'd never spoken about her past in such detail before and Boone waited for more.

"The point is, If she'd been given the chance, my mother would have gone on living. We could have used some adults in the weeks after the bandits left. We were a bunch of traumatized kids rattling around in a broken, violated vault full of corpses. In any case, those animals didn't give her a choice in the matter. Neither did you, when it came down to it."

He'd never told her the details of Carla's death, but one look in her eyes said she knew enough. Maybe coming here had filled in the gaps. Maybe he'd talked in his sleep. Maybe she was a mind reader like that kid at the 188 was supposed to be. There was no pity - he didn't think she was capable of that - but there _was_ understanding.

"You did what you felt you had to, last time. I ain't going to judge you for that. One man against so many, you had to make a choice. What's done is done. If I'd come to Novac sooner, I would have helped you do better."

Anger slipped away, replaced by a cool, calm void. Boone discovered that he actually was still capable of speech. "Only if there was something in it for you."

She thought about that a moment, rocking on her heels. "Yeah, you're probably right. Anyway, it's the thought that counts, right?" She reached out to pat his arm, then seemed to think better of it and tried again to brush herself off with filthy hands. "Are you going to stick this out or are you done? I think I'm established enough to continue without you, but we're doing good work together. My motivations should be incidental to you. This campaign of ours ends with a Legion defeat. I'm still trying to get you those shots, you know."

"And an NCR victory?" It didn't matter anymore, but he felt she wanted him to ask.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," she said vaguely. "Like I said, I like these Rangers. I don't want _them_ to go anywhere…" She trailed off, half-turning to squint at the camp below again. "On that note, I need to go back down there. I've got a bit of time-sensitive recon to pull off. Elbows to rub. Palms to grease." She rubbed her eyes, making her face even dirtier. "I could use a few days back at the Strip and a real shower, but I'm not sure when we'll be back there."

Without waiting for his answer, she reached inside her pocket and pulled out something that glittered in the light. He assumed dimly that it was another Chip of some sort. Another shiny marker for her quest.

"The Mark of Caesar," she said with relish. "It'll get me through the gates of the Fort. I don't mean the Old Mormon Fort, of course. Funny how their names-"

He cut off her prattling. "_Where did you get that?"_

"Oh." Another transient flash of guilt. "Vulpes Inculta gave it to me at the Strip, weeks ago. Honestly, it might be too late to get close - we've caused the Legion a lot of hurt lately - and there's a pretty good chance that we missed one or two at Nelson or Nipton." She sighed. "What do you think Caesar would do if I showed up in Power Armor? Anyway, come on down if you decide you want to live to see the end of this."

He let her go. A few minutes later, he swung his rifle onto his back and left the sniper's nest behind.

o - o - o - o - o

"If you're going to just sit here, then at least make yourself useful. We got mouths to feed, soldier-man." A woman with a face like carved wood, the _de facto_ leader of the freed slaves, thrust a pole and tackle box at him and stomped away, her steps echoing down the wooden dock. Boone obeyed, mechanically casting out and reeling in, again and again, adding the fish to a stringer in the bucket beside him. His sunglasses had vanished at some point between the beginning and the end of the bottle last night, and the glare on the water hurt his eyes, making his headache worse and burning his unprotected neck. He didn't care. He'd missed his opportunity to get close to Caesar and it was entirely his fault.

"_You can't see red without shooting. Normally, that's a good thing. Not this time. I can't bring you with me. You'll get all of us killed. You'll get your chance, I promise… but not today."_

After a lot of threats and cursing, Boone had admitted that she was right, but it didn't soothe his sour stomach.

He screwed up his eyes, searching downriver for any sign of their return. How long had they been gone by the time he was conscious again? Six hours? Seven? How long was this supposed to take? Six rangers wearing stolen costumes - stealing the identities of one officer and five grunts - had taken on the dangerous mission of escorting her there, trying to beat the news of Cottonwood's fall to Caesar's ear. The team had barely slept for the planning and quick preparations required.

Boone wasn't even sure why she wanted to go there. To get eyes inside the camp, he supposed. To size up Caesar in person. The Rangers had thought it worth the risk to get her there. No NCR ambassador had ever been _invited _to the Fort and never would. It was an advantage they couldn't pass up. They were grateful for the Courier's willingness to walk into the lion's den, though a couple tried to talk her out of it in private. Too dangerous, they said. Not worth it.

Their concern was misplaced. Martus was not the altruist or the patriot she sometimes pretended to be. Boone didn't know how anybody could be fooled. She was cold and brutal, and even her good deeds were transparently self-interested. After all of their months together, he still didn't know the particulars of her long-term plan, only that she was wildly ambitious and walked around as if she already owned the land.

In private, in the rare in-between times when they had a safe room for the night, she liked to tease and goad him just to the point of rage before retreating and playing it off as a joke. He had given up on keeping her at arm's length and their relationship had developed a toxic, violent sort of intimacy. Selfish desire met self-hatred, and the result made him sick, but he didn't put an end to it.

Sometimes Boone tried to imagine Martus and Carla in the same room and he found he couldn't. They belonged to different worlds and could never had met. In this new world, the one where he was driven by revenge, Martus was the perfect woman to punish himself with. She would drag him down to hell - and he welcomed the descent. It was as much as he deserved. Their relationship was a constant exercise in self-loathing and he embraced it for that reason.

A second line dropped into the water and an older ranger sat beside him on the dock and put a heavy, callused hand on his shoulder. "Don't you worry, lad. She'll be back. That one has the luck of the devil."

"Hope so."

Boone genuinely meant it. Without her, he'd have nothing.

Despite everything, he still wasn't ready for nothing.

o - o - o - o - o

Somewhere between Vegas and the Colorado in the stretch known as "Deathclaw Alley," Arcade was having a very, very bad day. What had begun as a mission of mercy to Aerotech had ended in slaughter, his guards butchered around him. The legionaries had him on the ground before he'd even found the presence of mind to reach for his weapon. Had they been there, Judah would have shaken his head, Orion would have cuffed him, hard, and Daisy would have sighed and told him he'd done his best. Eb probably would have been happy just to see that 'his boy' had grown up the furthest thing from a soldier.

So far as Arcade knew, the Legion had never come so close to the city before, at least not openly. Though the rumors trickling in said they were losing ground in more distant places - Nipton, Nelson, and Cottonwood, to name the most recent - they had seemed to become bolder in other, more subtle ways. And now the NCR couldn't find the targets that had given up staying in one place.

Since his capture, Arcade had been kicked, dragged, cursed at, and threatened with dismemberment, and as a result of this motivation they made good time. He had no doubt that a boat awaited him at the river, one of those unpatrolled places between the loosely strung Ranger stations, and that he'd be getting an inside view of Caesar's Fort by nightfall. As it turned out, however, they didn't make it that far.

When the shooting started, Arcade did what any bound prisoner would do in a firefight - threw himself to the ground, hoping very much that nothing would hit him. From there, he could hear and smell a laser weapon going off nearby, the red light penetrating through slitted eyelids, and he trembled to think about whose prisoner he would become next. Fiends used energy weapons a lot. Fiends were… not _worse_ than Legion, _per se_, but his death at their hands would almost certainly be more painful.

Later, he would wish he'd at least thought about opening his eyes and running.

The shooting and the screaming stopped, and it wasn't long before solicitous hands were cutting the ropes on his wrists and helping him up - perhaps a minute - though it felt much longer. He didn't know whether to feel relieved or apprehensive when he saw the face of his savior: the irrepressible Courier, come to haunt him again.

_No, scratch that. I'm definitely relieved. _He managed to be grateful, even, as he tried to find some composure, carefully straightening slightly bent glasses frames. "Thanks for the… assist, Courier. I didn't like where that was going. I suspect I was to be press-ganged into treating some high-ranking Legion officer. Not my idea of a career advancement."

"I suspect you were destined for Caesar himself, actually," the woman said cheerfully, flicking a lump of brain matter of his sleeve. "The man definitely needs a personal physician. Are you qualified to do brain surgery?" Her smile didn't slip a notch while she spoke, even as her glaring companion feigned muteness beside her. "Boone disagrees, but some part of me would prefer that Caesar live another few months or so - _with his sanity and judgement intact_ \- than see Legate Lanius ascend to the post. His reign would be short-lived, but worse than Caesar's, even. They'll both be dead in the end, though, mark my words."

Arcade struggled to catch up while rubbing chafed wrists to restore circulation to his hands. He finally realized that she was musing aloud about delivering him to Caesar herself.

"I could use the thirty pieces of silver for my war chest," she said thoughtfully. "But then there's the inconvenient matter of my being wanted, dead or alive, by those fine folks. Maybe I could send Boone to do the sale."

Arcade decided she was joking. "No. I'm not doing brain surgery in a tent on a megalomaniac warlord. Best case, he would die and so would I in short order; worst case, he would live and I'd be a slave. Honestly, it would probably be the former. Neurosurgeons are far and few between nowadays."

She shrugged. "Well, I didn't really want to sell you anyway. We're actually going to Camp Bitter Springs for a little R&R. Therapy for my boy here. Might be some refugees there in need of medical help and a shoulder to cry on. Do you want to come?"

In fact, Arcade wanted nothing more than to retreat to the safety of Freeside - his experience in the past twelve hours had been nothing short of traumatic, as was this conversation. But there were now many miles between him and the city gates, and he didn't want to traverse that distance alone. He could hear the transactional note in the Courier's voice, implying that he owed her. He wouldn't accept that debt like Julie and the others had… but, if there were people in need, he had a duty to them. Besides, he felt like he should at least pretend that she was giving him a choice in the matter.

"Fine," he conceded. "If we can find my kit among the bodies, so I'll have supplies to work with. Do you have water? My throat is dry."

She handed the canteen over, visibly triumphant. "And so the duo becomes a trio! Your brains, Boone's brawn, my stunning charisma and vision. I'm glad. You are _so_ much more suitable than that Brotherhood scribe. Though we may very well go after her next, poor, silly, lost lamb that she is. I have a very special purpose in mind for her."

Arcade choked on a mouthful of water. When he'd finally stopped spluttering, the Courier was holding two things out for him to take - his satchel (splashed with blood from one of the sniper's headshots) and his plasma defender, offered to him handle first. Her laughter had disappeared, replaced by a look of thoughtful intensity. She almost seemed apprehensive.

She waited for him to shoulder his belongings, then motioned to go. "Let's walk and talk, Dr. Gannon. Can I call you Arcade?" By unspoken understanding, the sniper dropped behind them, maintaining a gap of about twenty paces. The others fanned out around them. Arcade felt as if he was being escorted to his death. Perhaps he was.

He answered without thinking. "No." He wasn't sure why he'd refused - literally everyone called him by his first name, from his colleagues to the regular tweakers at the clinic. The Courier unnerved him, though, and he didn't want to concede any distance between them.

"Fair enough. Let's get to know each other, then. My name is Martus. Don't call me Courier to my face. I hate that name. I was born in a vault on the other side of the country, then spent three years aboveground in the Capital Wasteland before coming here. That's the area around Washington, D.C.," she clarified helpfully. "Our grand nation's erstwhile capital."

"I _know_ what Washington, D.C. is." He had questions - several of them - but refused to ask them.

"This is the part where you reciprocate," she prompted. "Where are you from?"

"I told you before, back at the Fort," he said reluctantly. "Don't you remember?"

"Memory is a slippery thing. Refresh me."

He repeated the old lie, embellishing it with the usual, well-rehearsed detail - not too much, not too little. It was a dull story, but he never departed from it. It had been his first and only catechism.

When he was done, she tilted her head and looked at the sky. "Huh. Will you look at that? It's clouding up. Might just have a little rain." She glanced back at him. "What interests me most is that scarcely a word of that was true. You should have woven a little truth in there. It would have given it a ring of authenticity. That's Mendacity 101. You're also sick of telling it to people, meaning you've given that spiel more times than any normal person would."

He betrayed himself with what popped out of his mouth next. "My mother invented it. She was an intelligent woman, but not particularly creative."

"If it's served you this long, then she did well," she said kindly. "Perhaps she saw that you were no liar. You're just too damn noble for this world." She was mocking him, obviously, but her tone actually sounded admiring.

"Thanks, I guess?" he said lightly, though his heart was pounding and his mouth had gone dry again. "Forget the license I've taken with my autobiography. Maybe I'm covering for some horrible childhood trauma, did you ever think of that? You've been fixated on me since the day we met. What I don't understand is why. Are you trying to blackmail me like you've blackmailed half of Freeside? If so, you're barking up the wrong tree. You can't get blood from a stone, _Courier_."

"'Threatening'?" She made a parody of acting shocked. "No, no, no. I wouldn't threaten you. Perish the thought! I'm just trying to make sure we're speaking the same language."

"I'm not sure that we are." He let his hand drop to the handle of the pistol on his belt, reminding himself that it was there, for what good it would do surrounded by people . He made his arm relax. "For instance, you think you have an advantage over me. Somehow. I don't even know who you are, other than yet another selfish, power-hungry opportunist." Behind them, the sniper cleared his throat loudly, and Arcade realized that he'd been steadily raising his voice. He lowered it to a whisper. "Who _are_ you?"

"Then let me tell you more about myself. My story will have more truth than yours, I promise. I'm an orphan, cast out in a cold, cruel world. I had two siblings - once - but I doubt they're still alive. I was never… allowed to see them again. No one I came west with survived the trip. I arrived in the Mojave utterly alone. Do you..." A hungry look came into her eyes. "Do you have any family, friends, or allies? _Resources_?" She hastened to clarify, "I don't mean among the Followers, though I value them highly. I have them already, anyway. I mean-"

"Let me stop you there," he snapped. "No, I have nobody. Like you, I'm an orphan with no family. I'm a humble… well, humble-ish… doctor who has no cards to add to your deck. Unlike you, I don't curry favor with the powers that be, speak to tyrants, or work for autocrats like Mr. House. I'm a Follower, through-and-through."

Disappointment flashed over her face even as she laughed. "Maybe that's true. But between you and me, I don't consider myself Mr. House's employee." She took in the distance looming tower, the city, with a grand sweep of her arm. "This town ain't big enough for the two of us."

"What about Caesar?" he asked, for lack of anything else to say to this extraordinary pronouncement.

Her grin became ferocious. "Even if he wasn't a month or two away from drooling on his collar, he would be out. I don't tolerate glorified bandits in my world. My star wouldn't have risen far in his ranks anyway. Obviously. That's not the _only_ reason I didn't join him. I'm not completely amoral. Also, Boone would have killed me."

"The NCR?"

Without turning her head, she cut her eyes at the sniper, speaking so quietly that Arcade had to lean in to hear her. "Let's hope for a peaceful resolution to that particular… problem. I do want to keep the Rangers, after all. Invaluable fighters in this region and somewhat independent from Shady Sands. A lot of them were born out here, you know." She hummed happily. "Before you ask, I'm going to eliminate the Brotherhood of Steel completely. Bunch of power-armored boy scouts, you ask me, but still potentially dangerous. Mutants, too. Jacobstown can wait, but Black Mountain must be purged."

She said no more, and Arcade, too, was silent for a long time, processing everything he'd heard. _What was that about the Brotherhood?_

"You're very forthcoming," he ventured at last, very quietly. "What would you do if I said I was going straight to McCarran with word of your impending betrayal?"

She wagged a finger playfully at him. "Now we get down to it. See, I don't think you will. You've lived your life avoiding the spotlight, and that's not going to change now. Am I wrong? Call my bluff, I dare you."

He stood frozen, arms hanging limply at his side, his weapon and sarcasm forgotten.

She waited politely, then continued. "No, you're not secure enough in your glass house to start throwing stones. A man who lies to friends and strangers alike about his origins is a man with something to hide. The fact of the matter is this: I need your help, Dr. Gannon, and you're going to give it to me. Sorry, but I'm not going to insult your intelligence by framing this as an actual request."

"It _is_ a request if I have the power to refuse. What if I do?" _After all this time, brought down by a delusional child. _He held his breath, afraid of the answer.

"Then that's your decision and I won't spell out the consequences, except that they're not good. It's not all bad, what I'm asking you to do, alright? I'll never ask you to kill for me. Eventually, I want us to be friends… or, failing that, then at least two people working toward the same goal: an independent Vegas. What do you say?"

"One question before I sign on: do you treat _all_ of your 'friends' like this? If so, I'm wondering how you're still alive. Not everybody is a sworn pacifist."

"Nah, the King gave me some very helpful pointers in dealing successfully with big egos. I'm usually more diplomatic, But you, sir, I have you by the short hairs. I don't need to play nice." She nodded sagely. "March to my tune and we'll speak no more of this. Good? Good." She clapped her hands and raised her voice so everyone could hear. "On to Bitter Springs. Keep a weather eye, people. The Legion are getting bolder."

Her stride was much shorter, but Arcade still had to step quickly to keep the pace she set. The lack of restraints notwithstanding, this wasn't much more comfortable than the Legion's escort had been. The silence between them lasted all of ten seconds before his new captor started pumping him for information.

"Tell me about the NCR," she ordered. "Just the last fifty years. My intelligence is grossly out of date and incomplete. Begin with the political sphere. Go."


	5. Knight to C6

"What is she doing?" Arcade asked Boone on a rare occasion they were alone together, watching from afar as the Courier pestered some nervous NCR lackey about 'negotiated rates'. "With _all_ of it, I mean."

He'd been a reluctant companion for a week now and so far he'd been underwhelmed. Relieved, but underwhelmed. Martus used words and favors more than cells or bullets. Rumors of her violent nature had been belied by her even-handed resolution of the standoff in Boulder City. Apart from a brief, one-sided melee on Bitter Springs' eastern side and occasional skirmishes with isolated Legion patrols, they'd seen very little action. What he _had_ seen were the actions of a semi-competent neutral, one outwardly content with carrying out petty tasks and contracts, and delivering messages and supplies to the various camps along the river.

In short, she'd become a glorified courier for the NCR. Arcade didn't understand it and she didn't enlighten him. Or Boone, apparently.

"Don't know, don't care."

"But this is your _life_ on the line out here. Why are you following her?"

Boone glared at him. "Why are _you_?" It was the first question the man had ever asked him.

Arcade shut up after that.

Maybe she resented the grind despite an affable exterior. Maybe she wanted to be out there killing without restraint. In any case, after a long evening of bargaining, it was an irritable Courier that called for a meeting of minds in the scuzzy bar area of the hotel in the outer district of Boulder City. One of the better lodging arrangements they'd enjoyed thus far, it had the appearance of safety, if not cleanliness. It was also reasonably deserted, now that the Khans had been sent packing and the city's displaced citizens were cautiously trickling back in.

"We'll spend tomorrow night at the Crimson Caravan's permanent enclosure," she announced shortly. "McLafferty _has_ to put us up after what she did. Then onto Westside. Then a couple of days on the Strip so I can get the sand out of my hair for once. You can, I _guess,_ go back to Freeside at that point if you don't fancy the lap of luxury, Dr. Gannon. I don't think you want to be party to what happens after that."

_What _does _happen after that?_ She'd given him the headlines already, if not the details: Brotherhood. Mutants. Two enemies in one campaign, this one carried out in partnership with a hard-won contingent from McCarran. No, Arcade wanted no part in whatever that was about. He hadn't even known the Brotherhood was here in Nevada, but he did know he didn't want to get within ten miles of them. He did wonder why she was not-too-subtly asking him to sit this one out. Had he failed some test out here?

God, he hoped so.

Word of their next destination was touching off alarm bells in his mind. "Why Westside?"

Martus had been staring out into space and mumbling something that sounded like, "Nellis. I want Nellis. What do _they_ want? How can I find out?"

Arcade ignored this. The air base northeast of Vegas was a sore spot with her. How could you blackmail people who wouldn't even let you talk to them? He tried again, using his patient lecturer's voice.

"Westside is a cooperative of dirt poor farmers… and people who aren't good enough for Freeside, which is saying something. Honestly, it's criminals, beggars, and cripples all the way down. Why go there?"

"Criminals have their uses," she said blandly, focusing on him again. "I've a few things to iron out with them in exchange for the community's cooperation. I'm in a place to help resolve the problems they're having with the NCR farmers with regard to the water situation. And Julie told me you have contacts there. You might be useful to me for once."

_Thanks, Julie_.

Arcade wasn't going to argue his usefulness, but Martus was being unfair and what's more she probably knew it. She'd lent him out - repeatedly - as a much-needed assist to the grossly undertrained and understaffed medical 'facilities' on the fringe of NCR control. His experience was more of the currency that paid for the favor and support that McCarran had been so reluctant to extend to her before. And so Arcade had found himself wearing blood-splattered aprons in various tent hospitals, accepting bonesaws from hollow-eyed medics far out of their depth. How could he not?

Patching up kids for another chance of dying in combat and stabilizing amputees enough to be transported home held not even the dubious job satisfaction that sustained him at the Old Mormon Fort. He missed his tranquil days picking weeds by the runoff from Freeside's sewage. It had actually smelled better than than the average NCR camp, he'd found.

"Boone, could you give us some privacy, please?"

The sniper left, leaving Arcade alone with the Courier. As it always did at such times, Arcade's stomach knotted up. She'd stopped threatening him, trusting in his memory, he supposed, but her conversation tended to keep him off balance.

"Is this all worth it?"

Arcade sighed inwardly. _Here we go again_. He didn't know if this question - a variation upon a common theme with her - was rhetorical or not. Nevertheless, he gave her what she wanted. He didn't _like_ being a sounding board for someone who would never listen, but at least this part of his job didn't involve amputations.

"Is what worth it?"

Martus waved a hand airily. "The fighting, the lying, the petty grubbing for favor from people I plan to stab in the back. The violence. The danger. The scope of the whole damn thing. I'm going to ruin a _lot_ of lives. Some of them deserve it, some of them don't. Is it worth it?"

"Do you have to ask? Nothing is worth all that."

Before she could answer, a rough-looking couple walked in and took a spot at the bar. Martus leaned forward and lowered her voice. "The world was always going to change. Yeah, I'm a catalyst. Much more than a catalyst, if I'm honest. So what? Someone had to do it. If not me, then who? If not now, then when?"

Her turn of phrase gave him pause. Intentionally or not, she'd echoed the Followers' unofficial motto. Coming from her, it sounded ugly, an excuse for being the one to fire the first shot or press the proverbial button.

"You can keep telling yourself that, but the life you're living will either kill you - my money's on that, by the way - or you'll end up with a lot of regrets. If indeed you do have a conscience, which I doubt, I hope it harries you relentlessly."

This was usually the point at which she would laugh or make a joke at his expense, and she didn't disappoint.

"I've outsourced that to you. You're doing a marvelous job, by the way." She shrugged, a gesture Arcade had come to recognize as her most obvious tell of discomfort. Her next words surprised him.

"Five years ago, I wouldn't have wanted this. All I wanted was a safe place for me and my surviving family. I was the oldest. I should have-" At some point in the past few minutes, she'd picked up a bent fork and had begun to use it to gouge splinters out of the table. When one of the tines broke off at this emotional juncture, she dropped the ruined implement and cut herself off. "I'm too tired for this tonight. Go to bed. Read. Mope. Or whatever it is you do. It's late and we have a long trek tomorrow."

Either she was deliberately manipulating him by flashing a weak hand, or that had been a genuine act of confidence on her part. Arcade pressed her carefully. She wouldn't hurt him for it. At least not physically. She wanted someone who would talk back to her, he thought. She certainly _needed_ one. "Go on. What should you have done?"

For once, she didn't snap at him, make a joke, or change the subject. Her expression was more one of confusion than of anything else, puzzled and faraway. "I don't know. Looking back, I'm not sure if I had a choice or not. I was only sixteen and I was hungry."

Arcade never knew what she was talking about, but his preprogrammed response leapt out of his mouth anyway. "You always have a choice."

Martus shook off the faraway look and countered the claim with a strained version of her jocular tone. "No. _You_ don't, for one, and I had less choice than you did." She laughed. "Well, maybe not." She stood up to leave. "I'll be _remembered_, Dr. Gannon. Just like the sainted Chosen One. That's something for a vaultie, isn't it?"

_Remembered for what?_ Arcade thought. "Hitler is remembered too," he reminded her, regretting the invocation immediately. No great rhetorical move there, yet people always seemed to reach for extremes in moral arguments.

She was predictably scornful. "Oh, come _on_. Don't go there. You know better." She started walking in the direction of the room she and Boone were sharing. "I don't care if you sleep or not, but we're getting an early start tomorrow. And Dr. Gannon?"

"What?"

"He isn't, you know. Hitler. The man on the street doesn't know that name. You, though - you'll be a footnote to my paragraph in history. I'm sure of it."

With that extraordinary pronouncement, she was gone.

o - o - o - o - o

"Have you ever heard of Adolf Hitler?"

Judah gave him a long, searching look, his bishop still hovering over the board in search of Arcade's king. "I didn't have _your_ education, but I'm not ignorant either. What about it?"

"Just curious. Guess you're not the man on the street, anyway." After two days of hard travel and another of waiting for the Courier to conduct whatever business she didn't want him to know about, Arcade was simultaneously footsore and restless. He wanted to start the walk back to Freeside - alone, if necessary - but Martus had told him no, she might need him after all. Anderson was proving difficult, she admitted, but he might listen to another Follower if the strong-arm method failed. In the meantime, didn't he have patients to tend to?

Arcade did indeed have patients in Westside, but he'd seen them all already. He'd even visited the healthy ones, people he'd treated in the past. It gave him satisfaction to see healthy children (even if they were a bit too thin), and to know that if they died it wouldn't be from polio or tetanus. The adults trusted him, more or less. They knew him and he them, if not well. Julie treated being sent to Westside as punishment work, but Arcade didn't see if that way. If he was comfortable anywhere it was here, with the other outlaws and rejects. What that said about his self-image he didn't care to acknowledge.

The reason he didn't ask for permanent assignment was that he didn't want to see Judah every day. The occasional chess game was fine, but that was enough for both of them. Anything more would be a constant reminder of times best forgotten. Besides, Arcade was pretty sure Judah only tolerated him for his late father's sake.

The old man made his move and Arcade searched for a way to salvage an indefensible position by going on the offensive. No such hope. He'd already given up too much ground to have a hope of winning. The best he could hope for at this point was a stalemate. He had barely taken his hand off of his knight before Judah took it. _Stupid, stupid_.

"Check. That's it for you, boy. Mate in five."

Caught in Judah's trap, Arcade conceded first his queen and then the game. Most of their matches ended that way. Even well into his seventies, his father's old captain had an uncommonly sharp mind.

"You can do better than that. Again?" Judah asked lazily, resetting the pieces. "Or do you need to start back before dark?"

Arcade opened his mouth to say that he'd be spending the night - Martus had told him so already - when a voice behind him made jump.

"Glad to find the two of you together."

Arcade said nothing. Speaking would betray how close he was to hysterics. _I shouldn't have let her catch me here_.

"Would you like to play, Martus?" Judah seldom smiled, but his voice was warm and welcoming. "The boy and I just finished. His head's not in it today."

Martus didn't even look at the game board. "Thanks but no thanks." She stood at attention beside the table, like a scout giving a report. "My contacts have located one of your people. She's at Aerotech. Someone will see her safely here when she's fit to travel." Her tone grew serious. "Novac is _gone_. She was lucky to escape. I really need to see about protecting or evacuating the outlying settlements or Primm and Goodsprings will be next." Weary and momentarily distracted, she spoke as if it actually were her responsibility to do so, and Arcade almost admired her for it. Or he would have, if his fight, flight, or freeze reaction hadn't settled on the 'freeze' option. Tumbling around in his head were questions he didn't really want to know the answer to.

_They already know each other_. _How? Why?_

"I haven't found the other two," she continued. "Nor have I paid a call on the mutants up north. I prefer to _kill_ the frankensteins, you know. Where I come from, we don't stop to talk with them, let alone live with them." She'd made her disgust for Meansonuvabitch patently clear, but had thus far respected Westside's tolerance for the creature.

"In general, I agree," Judah said mildly. "But ours is tame enough and good for the heavy lifting, and Henry has always had a way with the beasts."

"If you say so."

She hadn't even looked in Arcade's direction, but he imagined she was speaking for his benefit. Why else would she approach them both? The last thing he wanted to do was to betray himself, but he couldn't help it. If Novac truly had been overrun, then he _had_ to ask.

"Were you talking about Daisy?"

Martus looked at him for the first time. "Miss Whitman's fine, Dr. Gannon," she assured him, almost gently. "Just worn out, mostly. It's down to her anybody survived the second Legion attack at all." She shifted her feet. "I don't imagine she'll be happy with me. I did poach their sniper, not that he could have done much. Hopefully that won't affect her decision." She jerked her chin toward the seedier of Westside's two bars. "Boone's in there trying to drink himself to death. I waited until we were here to break the news to him." She shook her head. "I hope he can travel tomorrow."

"Have _you_ seen Eb or Orion recently?" Judah was looking at him now.

Numbly, Arcade shook his head. He was still trying to catch up with the implications of the Courier's casual allusion to Daisy's 'decision.' "It's been years."

Judah laughed ruefully. "Let's hope they haven't finally killed each other."

"Yes, let's hope." Martus sighed. "Well. We'll do what we can with what we have. I'll continue the search. We leave tomorrow morning, Arcade." She nodded a respectful farewell to the old man. "Kreger."

She disappeared into the brothel that doubled as a hotel and Arcade was left staring hopelessly at the black and white squires until Judah brought him back down to earth.

"You have the first move."

o - o - o - o - o

Martus didn't relax until the great doors of the Lucky 38 locked behind her and didn't _fully_ relax until she was alone in the penthouse with Yes Man and her other servants. Her soldiers had the floors below, with all of the amenities they could ask for, as well as access to and credit with the operating casinos on the Strip. Boone… well, she didn't actually know where Boone had gone. He hadn't spoken more than two words to her since they'd left Westside. She hoped she wouldn't lose him. If he had survived Cottonwood, to say nothing of Bitter Springs, surely he could survive Novac?

Walking toward the window, she left a trail of gear, weapons, socks, and shoes in her wake. Jane would have them tidied up and cleaned for her by morning. The carpet was fluffy between her toes and she reveled in the luxury of it. Literally peeling off a crusty set of clothes, she felt lighter than she had in weeks. Perfectly safe, for the first time since she'd left. _Clean_, once she'd had a much-needed shower. The world didn't have enough showers and she was lucky indeed to have one.

A chime behind her popped her bubble of satisfaction. Someone was in the elevator, on her floor. One of her employees, come to negotiate a raise? Boone, wanting to share her bed for some twisted reason of his own? One of the few Followers she'd granted access to the place? Her initial impulse toward anger softened to annoyed tolerance. She didn't really want to talk to anybody tonight, but decided she'd do them the courtesy of telling them so face-to-face. _Noblesse oblige._ A good leader condescends to her inferiors.

She rebuttoned her shirt quickly. "Who is it, Jane?"

In answer, the huge screen above projected a fuzzy view from the elevator camera. Martus saw a red beret and sunglasses and let down her guard. "Let him in."

She turned to greet him with a slightly-forced smile and this saved her life. It took her all of a half-second to realize _he wasn't Boone_. The man in the elevator was too short by far and stepped out with a sense of purpose that the sniper lacked. In the next half-second, she realized that he was pointing a gun at her. In that second, she flung herself down and to the right. The bullet meant for center mass only grazed her bicep. Another second and Jane had ended the assassin with very unladylike blunt force.

It was the first assassination attempt since Benny.

o - o - o - o - o

"You got complacent. That kind of carelessness will get you killed. Not that _I _care."

"Tell me something I _don't_ know." She hissed with pain as the tiny, hooked needle slid through her skin again. She'd taken med-x, needing to keep her head enough to shout orders at robots through the chaos, but that had been an hour ago. Dr. Gannon took no pains to be gentle. "You _should_ care. I'm the Mojave's best hope. Ow!"

"Don't you have an AutoDoc? What was the point of waking me up for a glorified scratch? First you drag me all the way back to Freeside, then-"

"Just one and Boone's still in there. The bastard cracked his skull. Besides, I needed to talk to _someone_." _And Mr. House would mock me mercilessly for this_.

"You should know that Boone is lucky to be alive. I'm surprised the assassin didn't just cut his throat. As is, we can only hope that he'll wake up with his faculties intact."

She knew it and she cursed herself for not being more suspicious. One of her own, a man with a gallant sense of humor and a rustic accent that she had secretly found attractive, had killed his three roommates and half-killed Boone before bluffing his way through several layers of security. Sloppy, to let it happen. For not vetting her hires more carefully. She'd have to be more careful going forward. She voiced this last thought out loud.

"Got to be more careful."

"Hold still," he growled at her.

Martus realized with disgust that she was trembling, from anger, fear, or shock, she didn't know. She tried to bring herself back under control, tried to ignore the bloodstains on the carpet that Jane hadn't managed to get out yet. At least the corpse had been dealt with already.

"I made a mistake," she admitted. It puzzled her that a stupid oversight had almost ended everything. "I could have _died_. Weird."

"We've been over that." He clipped off the end of the suture thread and wrapped gauze around her arm. At least it had been the bad one. If things kept up at this rate, she'd never use it effectively again. "Was he a Legion spy?" he asked casually. "I always thought he was nice enough, though in retrospect 'John Smith' was a little _too_ ordinary…"

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were enjoying this," she said tightly. "Yes, of course. What else would it be?" If the healing powder hadn't given it away, the coded message in his boot would have. Yes Man hadn't cracked it yet, but she suspected it said little more than _Kill the Courier by any means necessary_. She doubted she would ever learn his real name, not that she'd ever learned his false one.

"Gloria Van Graff," he said promptly. "Any of the casino bosses. The Khans… well, if they had the means or the brains to carry out something like this. The NCR. McLafferty-"

"Okay, okay. Point taken. Everyone hates me. Including you." She didn't know why there were tears in her eyes as she said this. She was very tired, after all, and this was a major setback, practically and psychologically. Vulnerable _again_, even in her sanctuary. "Thank goodness you're a Follower, right? Even if you do carry a gun."

He chuckled unpleasantly. "If I wasn't a Follower… well, it doesn't bear thinking of. Can I go?"

"No. There's something else." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She wished very much she dared take a second dose of med-x with the doctor in the room, but she couldn't. There were a few things he couldn't know yet. "Jane, go get that portable x-ray. As long as you're here, Dr. Gannon, and my arm already hurts..."

Once Jane had handed him the device, he squinted at the green-and-black screen, using the knobs to zoom in and out on the place she indicated on her inner forearm.

When he didn't say anything, she lifted her head and tried to get a good luck from the odd angle. "I found it before. 'Tween those two bones. Not that deep. Little pellet thing."

He kept his face impassive. "I see it. What am I looking at?"

"A foreign object. One that might eventually kill me. Remove it and leave it on that tray."

"If I was what you believe me to be, why would you trust me? Let me this close to you? I could end your life with one wrong twist of a scalpel." He cleaned the skin around the tiny scar carefully.

"I ain't saying nothing about what you might be," she said, eyes shut tight so she couldn't see the blade. "But I'm a spectacular judge of character, the late John Smith notwithstanding. I trust you not to violate your oath, and not just because I can ruin you with a word. You're _principled_, unfortunately for you. That's why the world's going to fuck you over repeatedly."

"Such is my reward for a virtuous life," he said with deep irony. "One 'foreign object' extraction, coming up…"

He said nothing else, but set about finding and removing the pellet. It took five minutes - five very _long_ minutes - before he dropped it on the tray and set the tweezers down, reaching for the suture again.

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me what that is? Or who tagged you with it?"

"Not righ' now. Stimpak my arm. I don't have time to heal the natural way."

"Of course. World domination can't wait. I'm starting to wonder if a _principled_ man wouldn't be doing the right thing by killing you. Something for me to meditate on. _Now_ can I go?"

Jane took the tray with the fatal pellet away. Martus slowly drank the bottle of water her servant had set by her elbow, hoping she wouldn't vomit it up. Then she stood up and tried to walk a straight line to her room, resisting the temptation to ask her robot servant for help. She'd shown enough weakness for one night.

"I want you to stay with Boone and check him over when the AutoDoc spits him out. Monitor him until I wake up… which might very well be tomorrow afternoon. I hope you took a look. Brought a book, I mean. If not, I think there's a Gideon Bible in the guest bedroom." She was babbling now, almost unaware of what she was saying. A shower was out of the question, unfortunately. She might not even make it into bed.

He didn't answer and she looked back to where he was still sitting by the bloody table next to the window.

"You push people too far," he said softly, looking almost sinister in the garish light from the Strip. Uneasy, she acknowledged for the first time that he was, after all, more than he pretended to me, principles notwithstanding. "Everybody you're trying to control, really, but especially me and that poor man you've got twisted around your little finger. This debacle has been only a taste of how that's going to blow up in your face eventually."

He continued to reflect aloud. "On the one hand, I don't care which way you go to destroy yourself. On the other hand, you've now involved the handful of people I actually care about. Daisy Whitman is the closest thing I have to family left. If you get her killed, I don't care what you hold over me. Do you understand?"

She put a steadying hand on the doorknob to keep herself upright and leaned her forehead against the cool metal that was painted to look like wood. "She'll be okay. They'll all be okay. I promise."

This was met with icy scorn. "_Can_ you promise that? You can't even protect yourself."

He said something else, something that sounded like, _Where is Mr. House, anyway? _Both questions went unanswered and she left him there, making sure of all three locks behind her - one of them electronic - before she fell into bed, six inches of reinforced steel between her and the outside world on all sides. Perhaps, this time, that would be enough.

o - o - o - o - o

It was late afternoon when she awoke and later still by the time she'd showered, dressed, and eaten. Thus made presentable and feeling fairly human again, she went to check on her guests.

Maybe it was guilt for letting her people die or maybe it was just emotional exhaustion, but for some reason she felt ashamed to face the doctor when she entered the guest bedroom. Sitting in an armchair by Boone's bedside, he was reading a two-hundred-year-old fashion magazine, but didn't seem to be enjoying it. He threw it down when he saw her in the doorway.

"It's about time."

"How is he?" she asked quietly.

"Still alive. Still sleeping. _Someone_ should stay with him and it isn't going to be me. I don't do indefinite house calls."

She quashed the childish impulse to say, _Well, you do now._ "No, of course not. I'm… genuinely sorry for the way I've treated you. I know I didn't give you a choice, but I appreciate it anyway. Let me make it up to you. Wait out there, please."

There was a disbelieving snort, but Martus couldn't take her eyes off of Boone. He'd never been that still, ever. Even in his sleep, he would always move and talk, so much so that she generally kept her distance in case he forgot where he was. To see him lying so peacefully scared her. She had told him the truth in that perch above Cottonwood - she didn't _need_ him anymore, not really - but she was accustomed to him. Felt responsible for him, and even uneasy for the way she'd driven and manipulated him. He'd already been hurt, a lot, and she had made things worse in some ways.

"I'll be right back," she told him. To Jane, on the way out, she said, "Watch him until I return. Report any change through the intercom. Come on, Dr. Gannon. I'm going to introduce you to Mr. House."

o - o - o - o - o

"...and that's what I'm doing next, in general terms," she concluded, pulling the thick robe tightly around her. Arcade wished he had a robe as well. It was _cold_ in Mr. House's _sanctum santorum_. He supposed that had something to do with the living mummy in the center of the room. Corpses needed good refrigeration if they wanted to stay fresh. "Pretty good so far, don't you think?"

The former tech magnate had expended all of his imprecations at the beginning of their conversation - apparently he'd been in solitary confinement for weeks, for which Arcade almost pitied him - but the air between them and his one remaining speaker still rippled with tension.

"What _I_ think is that you have dashed the hopes of two hundred years for a harebrained plot with less chance of success than a snowball in hell."

"It's going _fine_." Arcade couldn't help but laugh at this and Martus glowered at him. "I've done more in eight months than you've done in centuries. "

"Did you manage to get the Chip to its destination?" There was unmistakable curiosity and hunger in mechanical voice now.

"I did. Caesar gave me unsupervised access for some idiotic reason. All was as you said it would be. Robots galore, just waiting for the spark of life."

"Maybe you can do it after all." Mr. House sounded tired and resigned. "The human element was always the weakest link. Benny. You. I chose my agents poorly-"

"You and me both," she said gloomily. "Shoulda gone to a temp agency instead of a bar."

He continued as if she hadn't interrupted.

"...my mistake was that I assumed that I could depend on humans to behave reliably. I had been locked away for so long that I forgot people are insane. That they will, on a bad enough day, shoot you and then themselves for spite or pain."

"The two of you have a lot in common," Arcade murmured. Really, this was fascinating. If he hadn't been ready to nod off where he sat, he would have seized upon this once-in-a-lifetime chance to study the great Humbug of Vegas in the flesh. He would have to ask for another audience in the future, perhaps without the Courier in the room. He might learn some interesting things.

She shushed him and said loudly. "I see your point."

"On that subject, _I _can see nothing. Could you not at least give me my eyes and ears back? You have no idea how long a _day_ can seem confined to one's mind, let alone the weeks between the conversations you condescend to grant."

"I'll think about it when I get back. I need to go. Things to do, people to see. You understand."

"A warning: do _not_ underestimate the Brotherhood. A generation ago, they were a force to be reckoned with. Even decimated and trapped, they are dangerous. Even the children will be well-armed."

"This isn't my first time dealing with them. I'm going in prepared."

"See that you do. If you die, I die, and my empire fizzles out at the hands of those peace-loving Followers you've made your heirs."

"Don't worry. I've asked them to keep you around as a museum piece."

She shut off the fresh stream of abuse with a flick of one switch, and turned off the lights behind them with another. "Well," she said as they stepped out of the room, "now you know my secret in part. I think you had already begun to make your own guesses, however."

"What you have done is... astounding. Cruel, but when it comes to Mr. House, I don't know if I care. For the first time, I think you might actually win whatever prize you're aiming for. I'm not convinced that's a _good_ thing, but it is impressive."

If his backhanded compliment gratified her, she didn't show it. "Go home, Dr. Gannon. I'll come for you when I'm done with our knights in shining armor. I do have a bit of a personal grudge to settle there. I'm sure you can relate." She smiled that terrifying, would-be innocent smile, to all appearances undaunted by yesterday's setback. "Our business in Westside isn't over. I need a vertibird as soon as possible."


End file.
